International Legal Mechanisms for Combating Transnational Organized Crime: The Need for a Multilateral Convention

Abstract

While the recent discovery of Russian money laundering operations in American banks and businesses may have come as a "rude awakening for Americans,"' some experts, more familiar with Russian organized crime, foretold the boom these international criminals would enjoy following the breakup of the Soviet Union: [T]he Iron Curtain ... was a shield for the West. Now we've opened the gates, and this is very dangerous for the rest of the world. America is getting Russian criminals; Europe is getting Russian criminals. They'll steal everything. They'll occupy Europe. Nobody will have the resources to stop them. You people in the West don't know our mafia yet. You will, you will. -Serious Crimes Investigator Boris Uvarov in 19922 Globalization has brought prosperity not only to Russian criminal organizations, but also to all of the major transnational criminal groups around the world. Over the last decade, organized crime groups have significantly advanced in size, sophistication, and degree of transnational activity and cooperation.3 Today's main international criminal organizations are operating with the technology of