Organised Crime and Corrupting the Political System
| Date | 01 April 1999 |
| Published date | 01 April 1999 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb025932 |
| Pages | 147-154 |
| Author | George Gilligan |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & finance |
Journal of Financial Crime — Vol. 7 No. 2 — Analysis
Organised Crime and Corrupting the
Political System
George Gilligan
There are increasing levels of concern in many
countries about the threat posed by organised crime
to established political structures and processes. This
analysis considers some of the issues associated with
the political influence of organised crime.
ORGANISED CRIME AND
CORRUPTION
An immediate difficulty when analysing this subject
area is that of definition. There are very real prob-
lems in trying to define corruption and no universally
accepted definition. Some definitions centre on abuse
of public office, but most involve some conception of
the public interest and the element of private gain
for money, power or prestige. Definitional models
of corruption usually include varying degrees of
co-optation, or capture, of public agencies and offi-
cials.
Bcare lists four categories of corruption which
illustrate its paradoxical characteristics:
(1) bribes/kick-backs: payments are demanded or
expected in return for being allowed to do
legitimate business;
(2) election/campaign corruption: payments to gain
or maintain political influence;
(3) protection: payments to permit illegitimate
business; and
(4) systemic top-down corruption: a nation's wealth
is systematically siphoned off by ruling elites.2
When discussing corruption and/or organised crime,
it is worth pondering how applicable these four
categories are for both legitimate business and
organised crime within various countries and cul-
tures.
There has been a tendency in some Western
democracies to assume an ethnocentric universal
template for what constitutes corruption and what
should be done about it. Usually this is accompanied
by stinging criticism of jurisdictions viewed as par-
ticularly corrupt and an often quite deafening silence
on how corrupt one's own back yard might be. This
ambivalence and ambiguity on corruption is valuable
to organised crime groups, and can be exploited to
further their own commercial activities within the
host economy.
What is generally true about organised crime and
corruption is that corruption is very often necessary
in order to facilitate the smooth interaction of the
legitimate and illegitimate operations of organised
crime. The level and intensity of corruption required
will fluctuate. Often, as organised crime groups
and/or individuals become more sophisticated and
powerful, the violence component of their
operational equation will become increasingly
replaced by the corruption variable. This increasing
wealth and power of organised crime groups/
individuals is almost inevitably accompanied by
increasing social legitimacy, which in turn facilitates
the capacity for further corruption.
The most organically advanced forms of organised
crime arc those that have become the most sophisti-
cated agents of corruption, which in turn has allowed
them to become highly integrated into legitimate
society and often camouflaged from being perceived
as a social or criminal problem. This neutralisation of
opposition that corruption can assist is why it is a
master card for organised crime. Interestingly, it is
also part of a broader societal behavioural continuum,
because similar processes are employed by powerful
nations, corporations and individuals in the course
of conventional business in all types of
states,
whether
capitalist, communist or other totalitarian regimes.
Particular examples of these processes being part of
normal
business
arc the arms industry and major infra-
structure projects overseas. It is not uncommon for a
whole range of inducements to be offered by major
contractors in their efforts to bid successfully for
large military hardware defence contracts, or to
win the tenders for major projects, such as the
construction of airports and power systems.
In an increasingly globalised economy, economic
actors will continue to make rational decisions on
how to do business in different countries and cultures.
Organised crime and corruption have been, and
will continue to be, very real factors in a host of
rational business decision-making processes, in a
wide range of increasingly interlinked scenarios.
Journal of Financial Crime
Vol. 7 No 2. 1999, pp 147-154
© Henry Stewart Publications
ISSN 0969-6458
Page 147
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