The Russian and Polish Mafia in Central Europe

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, the "Russian Mafia" has been viewed as taking a leading role amongst the most powerful criminal organizations in the world." It is not surprising that the strong position of Russian-speaking criminal groups has a profound influence on the situation in central Europe in general, and in Poland in particular. The political transformation initiated in Poland in 1989 led to a change in the structure of various undesirable phenomena, including an unprecedented escalation of criminal activity which had not been considered to be a major problem until that time. Criminal groups have increased in number and in their level of professionalism ; more crimes, including those of an economic nature, are being committed in an organized and pre-planned way." At the same time, organized crime has undergone a process of internation-alization which is being facilitated by factors such as, amongst others, universal cash transactions in Poland, the permissible transfer of foreign currency across borders, open borders which are being penetrated by organized crime groups speaking Rus-sian and the system of the protection of legal order which still is not uniform in Po-land. An analysis of the threat posed by recognized criminal groups (based on, amongst other things, questionnaires submitted by local police units) indicates that in the year 2000 there were 405 criminal groups in Poland, with a total of 4,201 members.so 48 For instance see Ernesto U. Savona, Sabrina Adamoli , Paola Zoffi (with the assistance of Michael