Misha Glenny traces the rise of a 21st century underworld that knows no national boundaries. Matthew Price wonders if crime is the cost of doing business in the global economy.
McMa?a
Misha Glenny
The Bodley Head Ltd
Dh60
If the veteran journalist Misha Glenny is to be believed, terrorism should be the least of our worries. We have much more to fear from the international criminal rackets he chronicles in the well researched and downright scary McMafia.
"Crime and the pursuit of money or political power," says Glenny, "have proved incomparably more damaging over the last two decades."
Glenny, a former BBC correspondent, has put in the legwork to justify his claims – McMafia, which might be subtitled "Around the World in 80 Crimes", draws on nearly 300 interviews, compiled in Glenny's travels to some very dangerous places. As much at ease with tattooed gangsters as he is with law enforcement officials and policymakers, Glenny went to Colombia, the Balkans, the streets of São Paulo, the outlaw frontier of the Caucasus and beyond. At the very least, his publishers owe him some danger money.
McMafia documents a staggering array of criminal activity, in every possible field: cocaine and heroin smuggling; cybercrime and money laundering on a colossal scale; gun running and a worldwide traffic in diamonds, caviar, energy, migrant labour and prostitutes. All told, he notes, the turnover of this unregulated, untaxed and virtually unchecked "shadow economy" represents 15 to 20 per cent of the world's GDP.
This complex network of criminal enterprise is the mutant offspring of 21st century capitalism, and it began to flourish after communism's collapse in Eastern Europe. The end of the Soviet Bloc gave rise to an era of instability; across the region, thousands of secret police found themselves suddenly unemployed; criminal syndicates, ever in need of new muscle, were more than happy to enlist the services of highly trained killers in need of work. In Russia, a small, predatory super-class cornered the market in natural resources liked diamonds, metals, oil and gas.
Fledgling transitional states like Moldova and Ukraine became anarchic, anything-goes zones, where the distinction between criminal and politician was all but invisible. Bulgarians, Glenny observes, specialised in trafficking stolen cars, while Serbs did a booming business in small arms and contraband cigarettes.
The deregulation of banks and financial markets unleashed torrents of cash that move with ease between nations, flowing from legitimate economies to the underworld and back without a trace. The no-questions-asked policies of offshore banking centres like the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands allow gangsters to sock away their illicit millions. At the same time, highly regulated labour markets in the United States and European Union have spurred the creation of a vast, underground trade in migrant workers. Throw in the huge gulf that separates rich and poor countries, and you have the makings of a criminal bonanza.
Glenny reserves a special vehemence for complacent, affluent Western Europeans who "spend an ever-burgeoning amount of their spare time and money sleeping with prostitutes; smoking untaxed cigarettes; snorting coke through fifty-euro notes; employing illegal untaxed immigrant labour on subsistence wages; stuffing their gullets with caviar; admiring ivory and sitting on teak; and purchasing the livers and kidneys of the desperately poor".
But moral righteousness is not Glenny's strong suit; he excels at chronicling the unsavoury players in the shadow economy and their increasingly innovative tactics. For all their ethnic differences, the criminals in Glenny's pages are united by a fiendishly entrepreneurial spirit. In one of his most telling illustrations of the business savvy of criminal groups, Glenny describes the rise of a new generation of Colombian drug lords that emerged after the Medellin and Cali cartels were put out of business. Armed with MBAs, these young crime lords linked up with their peers in poorly-policed Albania, and put unemployed chemical engineers from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to work processing raw material into street drugs right on Europe's doorstep, shifting production "much closer to its final destination".
Glenny provides a devastating, richly documented account of American drug-control policies and their baleful effects on global security. Washington's insistence on prohibition, and its refusal to deal with soaring domestic demand for illegal drugs, has driven prices sky-high. In Colombia, profits from the cocaine trade keep at least two private armies in the field. The Taliban remain armed to the teeth, subsidised by the increasingly lucrative poppy trade. To Glenny, drug interdiction only strengthens these irregular militias: "The only way you can prevent the Taliban and others from sustaining their military capacity through drug sales," he argues bluntly, "is to legalise narcotics."
Still, Glenny is at a loss when it comes to tackling the problems he outlines; drugs are only one facet of a dauntingly complex puzzle. He makes vague calls for schemes of global governance to monitor international financial transactions, and urges world leaders to confront "the great structural iniquities in the global economy upon which crime and instability thrive." But there may be no single comprehensive solution, and even the specific reforms Glenny advocates would do little to strike at the roots of the problem. And perhaps nothing can. No legal regulation has ever been devised to control what really keeps criminals in business: human desire.
Matthew Price's writing has been published in Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and the Financial Times.
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Australia
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MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
Scores in brief:
Boost Defenders 205-5 in 20 overs
(Colin Ingram 84 not out, Cameron Delport 36, William Somerville 2-28)
bt Auckland Aces 170 for 5 in 20 overs
(Rob O’Donnell 67 not out, Kyle Abbott 3-21).
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
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- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
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- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
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Director Hansal Mehta
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Soham Shah, Esha Tiwari Pandey
Three stars
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Where, when and at what time Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday at 5pm (UAE time)
Arsenal line up (3-4-2-1) Petr Cech; Rob Holding, Per Mertesacker, Nacho Monreal; Hector Bellerin, Mohamed Elneny, Granit Xhaka, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain; Alex Iwobi, Danny Welbeck; Alexandre Lacazette
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger
Chelsea line up (3-4-2-1) Thibaut Courtois; Cesar Azpilicueta, David Luiz, Gary Cahill; Victor Moses, Cesc Fabregas, N'Golo Kante, Marcos Alonso; Willian, Pedro; Michy Batshuayi
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Tenet
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh
Rating: 5/5
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 247hp at 6,500rpm
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Transmission: 10-speed auto
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ELIO
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THE SPECS – Honda CR-V Touring AWD
Engine: 2.4-litre 4-cylinder
Power: 184hp at 6,400rpm
Torque: 244Nm at 3,900rpm
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0-100kmh in 9.4 seconds
Top speed: 202kmh
Fuel consumption: 6.8L/100km
Price: From Dh122,900
Biog
Mr Kandhari is legally authorised to conduct marriages in the gurdwara
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Fireball
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Ukraine confirmed the strike, saying the village some 40 kilometres south-west of Kyiv was targeted.
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Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
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Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Translated by Arunava Sinha
Tilted Axis Press
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Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
Torque: 623Nm
Transmission: 10-speed automatic
Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
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- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
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- 600-seat auditorium
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- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
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New Zealand T20 squad: Tim Southee (captain), Finn Allen, Todd Astle, Hamish Bennett, Mark Chapman, Devon Conway (wicketkeeper), Lockie Ferguson, Martin Guptill, Adam Milne, Daryl Mitchell, Glenn Phillips, Ish Sodhi, Will Young
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Date started: May 2018
Founder: Pir Arkam
Based: Dubai
Sector: Additive manufacturing (aka, 3D printing)
Staff: 18
Funding: Invested, supported and partnered by Joseph Group
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
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