IT IS not hard to discover what is wrong with Rio de Janeiro. Walk along the main shopping street of the Complexo de Alemão, a large shanty town that has been surrounded by police gunmen for months, and after about 20 metres the stalls selling fruit, vegetables and pirated DVDs give way to one selling [...]

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The phone call begins with the cries of an anguished child calling for a parent: “Mama! Papa!” The youngster’s sobs are quickly replaced by a husky male voice that means business.
“We’ve got your child,” he says in rapid-fire Spanish, usually adding an expletive for effect and then rattling off a list of demands that might [...]

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The Mafia are ingeniously silver-plating their glimmering stash of South Africa’s stolen gold. The disguise has allowed them to launder money in Swiss bank accounts. Investigations finger top Swiss Bank — UBS, and its subsidiary Metalor, who is the proven recipient of the ‘odd gold’. So shouldn’t Metalor have informed the authorities? Technically they’ve so [...]

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Mexico finds tons of cocaine in submarine
Reuters - 4 hours ago
… which they say would do more to weaken the cartels. Some 1700 people have been killed in drug gang violence in Mexico so far this year, and Calderon’s …

Mexico infiltrated
ISN, Switzerland - Jul 17, 2008
With a fast increase of police, will the government prevent [...]

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In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman’s bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it’s also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth’s [...]

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It’s A Growing Threat To America’s Security - And Two Men Infiltrated It: The Russian Mafia
The Justice Department is launching a bold 21st Century attack to combat what Attorney General Michael Mukasey calls the “growing threat” that international organized crime is posing to “U.S. security and stability.” CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian looks [...]

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When the dust settled following a bus explosion in Togliatti, Russia, on Oct. 31, few explanations emerged as to who was responsible for the attack, which killed eight people and injured at least 50. Although terrorism is a possibility, two leading theories place the blame on Russian organized crime.
One such theory suggests that a [...]

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The Sopranos, an acclaimed television drama about a fictional Italian-American mobster, is headed for its last season finale after six years of startling success. But what of the real-world mafias that control illicit trade and terrorize innocent victims from Moscow to Mexico City? This week’s Foreign Policy Magazine List shows that when it comes to [...]

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