Customer Reviews

The Merger : The Conglomeration of International Organized Crime

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I loved The Laundrymen and couldn't wait to see this. But whereas The Laundrymen worried me, this is truly frightening. Robinson isn't talking about some monolithic international crime syndicate, the picture he paints is of ruthless, professional opportunists who understand that big business today must think global. And these opportunists run very big businesses. The Merger is the single best book I've ever read on transnational organized crime, and should serve as a warning to all of us that the war on crime is, like the business of crime, global. Until governments equip law enforcement to fight this war properly, globally, it is a war we will lose.

If you really want to know about the various different gangs, what their business is in, how they operate and where, then you will want this book. The author goes into details of operations used to capture, and at times not capture various transnational organized gangs. On the flip side he also describes how the gangs operate to circumvent the law, including names of major players and which cities they are located in.

Ironically when I finished reading one of the chapters on Russian Maffiya there was an article in the newpaper concerning a front company that I had read about in the book. The book covered a lot of information to the extent that when I read the article I was thinking that there was a lot missing that they either don't know about or don't want to print. Check out YBM Magnetics, read this book and find out what they don't tell you.

I found "The Merger" to be an outstanding book, easy to read and filled with unforgettable characters. In fact, it reads like a novel. What's more, the author offers some serious suggestions about how to diminish the influence of international organized crime. I never realized just how dangerous the world had become, and how dangerous the future will be, unless we do something soon. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know the truth behind the headlines!

Bought it on a whim while finishing shopping Christmas Eve. Started it Christmas Day and finished it the next night. A great read, flows nicely. It reads like something from a Tom Clancy novel but scarier.

`The Merger' is the most comprehensive book on international crime.

The theme is how various gangs and mafias from different nations are cooperating versus competing. This game of cooperation enables each criminal organization to focus on a core competency to increase efficiency. These gangs are no longer disorganized but operate in ways similar to corporations, and are often more knowledgeable & advanced than the 'good guys'.

The other main focus of this book is how these same organizations are using the limitations of police jurisdiction to their advantage.

One way they utilize jurisdiction to their advantage is by meeting in one country, such as Vienna, Austria. There the Russians, Sicilians, Italians, and other gangs stage conferences discussing expansion. They intentionally commit no crime in Austria. Since no crime is committed the police cannot arrest them. They go there as businessmen and behave themselves.

Other means of using jurisdictions to their advantage is to facilitate money laundering. They register multiple shell companies in countries with strict banking privacy laws such as Panama & the Cayman Islands.

They also use Indian reservations to move drugs, contraband alcohol & cigarettes amongst other things. These Indian reservations are constantly seeking more territory supposedly to protect their land, when in truth it usually involves a while man pulling strings as to gain more territory to smuggle drugs. They then wash the proceeds through casinos, and finally launder the money in some offshore banks.

Russians extorting other Russians, Nigerians scamming Europeans & North Americans, it's all covered in this book. Learn about how one organization attempted to buy an old military submarine to smuggle drugs into the USA, meanwhile they were doing this while under surveillance.

This is very well researched & is probably the best book on the market in its category.

The Cali cartel, whose profits dwarf those of America's largest companies, have a simple mode of operating. All potential partners fill in a simple form listing the names and addresses of all their living relatives so these urbane men know whom to knock off, if they are double-crossed.

Not that the Colombian cocaine cartels are the world's only baddies. The Mohawk Warriors smuggle $1 bn worth of contraband across the American Canadian frontier every year. And, in today's age of globalized mergers, they work with all comers, from the Cali cartel and Chinese snakeheads to the Russian gangsters, who dominate this book.

Former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin is quoted as saying that "Russia is the biggest Mafia state in the world". It is certainly the most dangerous. Although Moscow, from 1991 to 1999, has witnessed thousands of contract killings, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for any of them.

And these gangsters are headed our way in big numbers. And these Russians have some interesting friends. Marc Rich, recently pardoned by Bill Clinton, is mentioned in the book, for doing deals with the Russians and trading in conflict diamonds with the Liberians. Robinson claims that Grigory Loutchansky also donated to Clinton's coffers; he is allegedly the world's most important dealer in black-market nuclear materials. He was considered important enough to be the subject of a 1995 eleven-nation, two-day conference hosted by Interpol. Sergei Mikhailov, who has accumulated a staggering array of passports, including a diplomatic passport for Costa Rica, is probably worth another conference.

So too is the damage these people cause at all levels of society. As well as shaking down American based Russian hockey and basketball players, peddling guns, girls and gambling and putting contracts out on over zealous FBI agents, Robinson contends that Russia's gangsters are also undermining sovereign nations like Israel.

Israel's Law of Return has allowed thousands of Russian gangsters, both Jewish and non Jewish, to establish themselves in Israel. Because Israel does not extradite its citizens, it is a perfect hiding hole for these ruthless racketeers, who have a staggering war chest of $4 billion to buy political influence there.

If Robinson is to believed, the Russian mafia more or less control both the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus. They also seem to be well entrenched in London, New York, Geneva, Vienna and the world's other major financial centers. The FBI and other law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, struggle to catch even the small fry.

Other countries, the Caribbean ones in particular, long ago sold their souls to the international criminals, who use them to launder their billions. Still, even Dutch controlled Aruba, the world's first mafia state, never went quite as far as the Seychelles, which offered internationally recognized diplomatic passports, plus guaranteed immunity on the island from any form of extradition requested by any other nation, for a mere $10 million. There were plenty of takers, until the tiny nation was forced to withdraw its generous offer of diplomatic immunity to the world's most ruthless criminals.

Not that the Seychelles matter much. The Russian criminal gangs, the Colombians, the Mohawks and the rest of them are uniting in their drive to maximize their global profits no matter what the social cost. And, in today's globalized age, the West contributes to their excesses by buying their contraband, renting out their sex slaves and gambling in their shady casinos. And all their ill-gotten profits are used to traffic more human cargo and move more tons of heroin across our porous borders.

And then there are the nuclear bomb peddlers, another legacy of the Soviet Union's collapse. There is, as Robinson tells us, enough unaccounted-for fissile material that once belonged to the Soviet armed forces to turn Europe and the United States into a moonscape. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and similar people have shown that there is a demand for this material.

Until we can dampen that demand, we must be prepared to live with the dismal consequences these suppliers of human misery beget. Not, by any stretch, a pleasant thought, but a realistic one nonetheless.

It's all here. The history of organized crime and the future, too. Don't believe other reviewers who say it's difficult to follow. The book reads very well as the author, in full command of the situation, explains how and why transnational organized criminals have become the most powerful special interest group on the planet. This isn't his opinion, the facts are fully documented. What's more, organized crime's links with global terrorists are here, as well, which, in the aftermath of 9-11 makes this a must read.

The author from the best selling Laundrymen comes back with another great book detailing the organized crime syndicates growth and globalization. The facts presented draws a very frightening picture of the skills and powers of the different mafias and how much they have accomplished, and also takes a look at their bold new plans for the future. Ranging from Italian, Russian, Columbian, Mexican to Asian organizations, the book shows how they have managed to outrun the police due to operating truly global utilizing each others skills to operate at maximum profitability and minimizing risk and exposure (that would make any legal company proud). The book reads like a novel, and is full of fascinating, menacing and colorful characters that you rather only read about than meet. Although, this is key knowledge to understand the world we live in and what goes on around us in these changing times -- it's not all pretty. This is a must read for anybody interested in global crime and the different cultural aspects of the development of society.

This book was a true learning experience on a subject that was an enigma to me. The author does a superb job in transporting us around a world of ruthless schemes of overriding the law in mafia society. I am still sweating!!!

An outstanding look at modern international crime. Robinson has all the details and facts but puts them together in a compelling fashion that makes this book as much a page-turner as any crime novel. He has a knack for taking a complex subject and making it very clear without dumbing it down. I highly recommend this book, especially if you want to know why the "war on drugs" is failing miserably.