Fighting Organized Crime and Public Corruption
by Michael Gray

No economic plan or provision for democratic and legal reform, including regulatory controls and criminal statutes—no matter how comprehensive—can guarantee the creation of a market economy free from fraud and corruption. Although some crimes could be prevented by enacting laws that aim to eliminate the economic incentives of illegal activity, the law’s effectiveness will ultimately depend upon thorough investigation, prosecution, and enforcement. Corruption within the law enforcement community itself not only prevents an effective apprehension and prosecution of organized crime, it offers a haven for criminal activity within the state structure itself. 

This is the case in many transition economies, where law enforcement agencies seem overwhelmed by the challenges posed by the explosion of organized crime and corruption. The region is awash with narcotics, smuggled weapons, and stolen automobiles. The ranks of organized crime often comprise government officials, members of the police, and even prosecutors. In testimony before a U.S. Congressional Subcommittee for Appropriations, U.S. investors complained of rampant corruption among government officials in Ukraine and apparent links between Ukrainian law enforcement officials—including the newly founded Tax Police—and Russian organized crime. They linked law enforcement officials’ failure to intervene in obvious corruption incidents to their acceptance of bribes from organized crime figures. And since early 1996 the complaints have increasingly mentioned the presence of Russian organized crime in Ukraine. 

With privatization now under way in Ukraine, Western governments and multilateral assistance organizations are concerned that Russian organized crime groups, having developed their expertise during Russia’s privatization program, will flourish and expand in an environment robust for transnational crime activity and replete with corruption. Ukraine represents a significant challenge as well as opportunity for the United States and other countries to take the lessons learned thus far in Russia’s privatization process and play a more constructive role in helping the Ukrainian Government sever the links between public officialdom and illicit private gain. 

In November 1996, in response to requests for assistance from several countries in the region, including Russia and Ukraine, and the growing threat to the United States posed by Eurasian organized crime, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI initiated an ambitious effort to provide anticrime and corruption assistance to countries of the newly independent states of Europe and Asia. These requests for assistance in many ways mirrored those addressed to the World Bank and other multilateral development institutions across the globe: institutions and practices were required to effectively confront organized crime and corruption, without creating a new bureaucratic structure that would deepen existing interagency rivalries. The challenge faced by the Justice Department and FBI officials from the beginning of this program was stark if not simple: What could Western agencies do to help provide a near term solution to the problem of corruption, and specifically, corruption among law enforcement agencies? 

The Justice Department found an effective weapon in its law enforcement arsenal: it concluded that the experiences of its anticrime Strike Forces and anti-public corruption task forces could provide useful lessons to Russia and other newly independent states, where pervasive organized crime and public corruption practically merge. The Strike Forces are permanent units established in key cities around the United States, as semiautonomous group of investigators and prosecutors. Their primary purpose is to combat organized crime whose tentacles reach into public and official life. They operate with enough independence to be able to effectively investigate and prosecute powerful public officials believed to be corrupt. Anticorruption task forces, on the other hand, are temporary, and are typically set up to address a particular type of corruption. 

In the past three decades the two forces, in combination, have played a key role in breaking the stranglehold of organized crime and corruption in major economic sectors of the United States. As the activities of organized crime and corrupt public officials typically cut across lines of perceived jurisdictions among law enforcement agencies, the creation of elite units composed of agents working closely together tends to significantly reduce the problem of interagency rivalries. Also, the institutional knowledge developed among a team of permanent investigators and prosecutors over a long period has proved an invaluable tool in improving investigative and prosecutorial techniques in the United States. 

The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI conducted a series of workshops in Russia and Ukraine in the past two years promoting the establishment of closer interagency cooperation in combating crime and corruption. More than 300 investigators and prosecutors from the Ministries of Internal Affairs, Security Services (formerly the KGB), Customs Services, Boarder Guards, Tax Police, and General Procuracy participated in the workshops in Moscow, Kiev, and Uzhgorod, and in Washington, D.C. To stem the growth of public corruption and organized crime the following goals were drawn up: 

• Western governments and multilateral organizations, including the World Bank, should establish clear links between their assistance, especially in support of privatization, and effective law enforcement. 

• Policymakers and law enforcement officials in the former Communist countries should set up interagency organizations to fight crime and corruption—similar to the Strike Forces proposed in Ukraine—and, in particular, these organizations should combat corruption within the law enforcement community. 

• The efforts of governments and enacted legislation should be directed toward reform of law enforcement and the judiciary, in order to help safeguard civil liberties and foster public participation in anticorruption initiatives. 

The author is former director of the Program for Anti-Organized Crime Assistance to CEE and FSU countries, at the U.S. Department of Justice.