Anti-mafia style powers would allow British prosecutors to seize £1bn of suspect assets from oligarchs and kleptocrats, researchers have said.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) today says ministers seeking to halt the flow of dirty money into the UK should consider adopting laws like those used by Italian authorities to smash organised crime networks.
These would allow investigators to confiscate property and other assets if they can show that oligarchs and kleptocrats are a national security threat because of their association with corrupt governments and individuals.
The argument in favour of the anti-mafia style laws – like RICO – was that there was no other way to break the mafia networks. That turned out to mean that RICO was expanded, expanded and expanded so that no man’s property was safe. As if the legislature were in permanent session.
The argument that this won’t happen again, so that any foreigners’ cash was fair game, is what?
Quite, bugger off.
Have the mafia and other organised crime networks been smashed in either Italy or the USA? No? Then it doesn’t work then, does it?
Give an inch….
See also the mess that is civil forfeiture in some US states.
https://shows.acast.com/cato-daily-podcast/episodes/matter-8000-stolen-government
Exactly BiW. This is whack a mole stuff. The crims constantly find new ways to launder or hide cash, while amateurs like those MEPs in Brussels keep it in DelHaize carrier bags.
The only people it really inconveniences are the general public going about their businesx, where occasionally large sums might need moving around.
They could call it the “Stand And Deliver Act 2023”.
The US mafia is a pale shade of what it used to be. The Italian mafia is losing power too, quite rapidly.
Perhaps the cure is worse than the disease, but those laws have achieved their aims.
Would you prefer the alternative, where the mafia gets to continue as before? Do you have better suggestions for loosening its hold?
Defeating entrenched organized crime is not easy. Anyone who suggests easy solutions is a fool.
I’m no fan of the “war on drugs”, or similar attempts at social control for that matter, but getting the mafia out of real political power is far more important. In much of Eastern Europe that is what is really holding them back — organized crime and politics is a toxic mix.
The real difference between organised crime and the government is that the former won’t bleed you to death with their ‘tax’, but the latter will.
Chester,
“The Italian mafia is losing power ….” .
The son of an ex (British) army colleague, who moved to the USA, is employed in the criminal justice system in New York. Apparently, the Italian mafia has been superseded by the Russians and Chinese who, allegedly, have offices in their respective embassies, which makes it almost impossible to deal with them.
I would like to see some solid evidence that asset confiscation is the reason, and not just (for example) general rising prosperity making gangsterism relatively less attractive.
Yarp, the Italian mafia just got old and Italians settled down into middle class lifestyles.
The US now has much bigger problems with Latin American drug gangs than it ever did with Al Capone, but then this shouldn’t surprise. Organised gang crime is highly correlated with immigration and the US made a strategic decision to demographically merge with LATAM in the 60’s.
Also, if you think their “anti-corruption” efforts have made the US *less* corrupt, I know an incontinent geriatric pedophile whose crackhead son wants to sell you paintings. The USA is no longer a high trust society, and neither is Britain.
And here’s the other thing – the UK government isn’t as honest and trustworthy as the Italian one;)
“I’m no fan of the “war on drugs”, or similar attempts at social control for that matter, but getting the mafia out of real political power ”
Brother, it was Prohibition that got the Mafia into real political control and it was the repeal of prohibition that broke them.
It is the war on drugs that enriches the drug gangs.
You are advocating giving government more power to fight a problem caused by government.