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Union (EU) defined organized crime as a criminal organisation consisting of a structured association of two or more persons, ‘acting in concert with a view to committing crimes or other offences that are an end in themselves or a means of obtaining material benefits and…improperly influencing the operation of public authorities’ (cited in Wright 2006:8).
One of the problems faced by law enforcement and judiciary systems, though, is that there has been a lack of a consensus concerning the definition of the term ‘organized crime’. This has resulted in a failure to formulate laws that can effectively combat this problem on both a national and international level. This conundrum is further compounded by the differences that exist between judicial systems and police strategies both on a national and international level resulting in a scarcity of information sharing between organizations (Roth, 2010: 6).
Organized crime groups, aware of such discrepancies, have exploited these to their advantage.
Realising this shortcoming and the dangers thereof, the United Nations attempted to formulate a working definition of organized crime at the 2000 Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (TOC). Due to the intricate and complex notion of organized crime, international representatives failed to achieve consensus on a working definition of the term (Lyman & Potter, 2011:8). To overcome this impasse, the UN representatives instead adopted a broad definition of organized criminal groups which they defined as:
a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences established in accordance with this Convention, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit (TOC Convention, Article 2(a)).
To further elaborate on the above definition, the convention expounded the features that would determine what constituted as a transnational offense when committed by an organized criminal group. An offense was classified as transnational if: (i) the offense was committed in more than one state; or (ii) a substantial part of the transgression was prepared, planned, directed or controlled in one state but executed in another state; or (iii) the felony was perpetrated in one state by an organized group that engrossed in criminal activities in more than one state; or (iv) the offense was committed in one state but its repercussion extends to other states (TOC Convention, Article 3(2)). While there is no explicit iteration in the TOC Convention of what consists of criminal acts, the UN has nonetheless identified 18 categories of transnational offenses that display the characteristics denoted in Article 3 (2) above. These
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include: money laundering, computer crime, terrorist activities, environmental crime, theft of art and cultural objects, trafficking in persons, theft of intellectual property, trade in human body parts, illicit arms trafficking, illegal drug trafficking, aircraft hijacking, fraudulent bankruptcy, sea piracy, infiltration of legal business, insurance fraud, corruption and bribery of public or party officials (Roth, 2010:7). Moreover, factors that facilitate and promote the flow of transnational organised crime offenses can be attributed to corruption, poor governance, failing states and porous borders (Shelley, 2014; Lacher, 2012; White 2009). The UN definition also highlights a crucial aspect of organized crime as compared to religious terrorist groups. Unlike the latter, the former is motivated by profits and ideology has no impact on directing or influencing the members of an organized criminal group.
While there is often the enticement to delineate TOC groups as ‘organized’ groups with a hierarchal structure; this is not always the case. The above definition of organized criminal groups clarifies this misconception as it attempts to not ‘limit the scope of application [of the definition] to hierarchal structured or mafia type organizations only’ (UNODC cited in Roth 2010:7). This clarification gains more significance within the scope of this study as it is applied to a terrorist group that either conjoined with or evolved into a TOC group, namely, AQIM. Additionally, having thus adopted a working definition of TOC, it is noteworthy to situate it within the context of the study.
The significance of the Sahel-Sahara region in the organized crime domain, according to Lacher (2012:4), is not that it is a pivotal area for TOC but rather that there exists few other engagements that allow groups to acquire similar profits in that region. Nonetheless, the Sahel region of Mauritania, Algeria, Niger, Mali and Libya remains a hub for TOC operations that consist of the smuggling of Morroco cannabis resin, drugs, narcotics and kidnapping for ransom amongst others. Ab initio, cigarette smuggling was the original operation of the organised crime network in the Sahel and it contributed immensely to the subsequent emergence of the practice and networks that have solidified the growth of drug trafficking into its present state (2012:5). The smuggling of narcotics still remains a primary form of revenue for some criminal groups as typified in Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former commander AQIM, who was so successful in smuggling cigarettes that he was subsequently given the moniker ‘Mr Malboro’ (The Guardian, 2013). The increase in TOC has serious implications concerning the security in the Sahel region and this threat is further amplified
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when terrorist groups evolve into TOC organisations. This phenomenon is often referred to as the crime-terror continuum and as such merits an explication.