Intelligence Review 

*Mersey heat - gang culture in Liverpool
Gangs in Liverpool have been documented since the mid-19th century and probably date back well before the Victorian era, in part because of the port's...
12-Jan-2012
*Cross over - The new Mexico-US border strategy
In July, Mexico will vote for a new president, replacing incumbent leader Felipe Calderón. The defining feature of Calderón's presidency has been the security crackdown...
05-Jan-2012
*Deep impact - Trouble hits the Philippine mining sector
At around 09:00 local time (o1:00 GMT) on 3 October 2011, more than 200 communist New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas drove commandeered trucks into the...
23-Dec-2011
*Family planning - The Calabrian mafia spreads northwards in Italy
A court in Milan on 20 November 2011 convicted 110 members of the 'Ndrangheta, issuing cumulative sentences of more than 1,000 years in prison. The...
09-Dec-2011
*Independence days - Lithuanian gangs expand in Europe
Europol's OCTA 2011: European Union Organised Crime Threat Assessment report identified a series of key criminal hubs, "concentrations of criminal logistics... whose influence extends ...
08-Dec-2011
*Crime stoppers - UK overhauls organised crime policing
In June, the UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced that the country's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was to be disbanded and replaced by a...
10-Nov-2011
*The outsiders - Vietnamese crime groups in the Czech Republic
After years of largely being overlooked by the Czech authorities, the phenomenon of Vietnamese organised crime in the Czech Republic is coming under greater scrutiny....
09-Nov-2011
*Divide and conquer - Factionalised triad gang spreads its wings
Hong Kong police officers arrested 53 people in early 2011 in a series of raids dubbed Operation Oakclimber. Aimed at dealing a serious blow to...
12-Oct-2011
*Sibling rivalry - Brothers lead Colombian Bacrim groups to battle
Colombia's criminal community has coalesced around two main criminal networks, which are currently competing for dominance in the drug trafficking market. Both are led...
12-Oct-2011
*Lacking conviction - Organised crime in Germany
Germany's status as one of the wealthiest European countries means it has become a key consumer market for various types of drugs, as well as...
13-Sep-2011
*Slum lords - Comando Vermelho's hold on Brazil's favelas
Rio de Janeiro has one of the highest levels of economic disparity of any city in the world, with the glitteringly affluent Leblon and Barra...
31-Aug-2011
*Human cost - Nigerian criminal networks in the UK
The UK is increasingly becoming a location for the activities of Nigerian organised crime groups, partly stemming from the country's large Nigerian population but also...
12-Aug-2011
*Mohawk mafia - Smuggling in Native American reservations
On 14 June 2011, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Sûreté du Québec (the national police force of Québec) launched a major operation...
27-Jul-2011
*Invisible empires - Portugal opens up Europe to traffickers
Portugal is often perceived at the European and international level as an important entry point for organised criminal gangs to the EU and as a...
14-Jul-2011
*Vicious circles - Gang legacy of the Cultural Revolution
The Big Circle Boys is one of China's major organised crime groups, yet it specialises in operating outside China. Using a strong presence in Hong...
07-Jul-2011
*The untouchables - Organised crime grows stronger in Bulgaria
In a single day in the early 1990s, the international community inadvertently changed the entire landscape of Bulgarian organised crime. On 29 November 1992, the...
16-Jun-2011
*Fight clubs - Poland clamps down on football gangs
A full-scale riot at a football cup final match between Lech Poznan and Legia Warszawa in the northern city of Bydgoszcz on 3 May highlighted...
15-Jun-2011
*Bare trap - Albanian police step up co-operation
The conviction of Aldo Bare in March was something of a watershed for Albanian counter-crime operations. Over his 14-year career, Bare had become a high-profile...
20-May-2011
*Up in smoke - Netherlands changes tack on drug policy
For many years, the Netherlands was portrayed as an example of the benefits of the decriminalisation of drugs, which took place after the passing of...
18-May-2011
*Crime Travellers - Irish nomadic gangs extend their reach
Criminal gangs operating within the Irish Traveller community are generally loosely organised. They are a disparate collection of individual groups, often composed of members of...
13-Apr-2011
*Ice age - Southeast Asia's amphetamine trade
Over the past two years, Thailand's chronic and still unresolved political crisis has not only polarised the country and triggered serious civil unrest but also...
05-Apr-2011
*Murky waters - Smuggling through the Mediterranean
On 13 January, Spanish police arrested four people and seized 162 kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of EUR16 million (USD22 million) in...
02-Mar-2011
*Extended family: The Italian mafia's continued expansion
Since the first appearance of the Italian mafia in the 19th century, these once small criminal associations have developed into one of Italy's most powerful...
25-Feb-2011
*Bekaa badlands - Criminal groups prosper in Lebanese valley
When a Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) commando unit ambushed and killed Ali Abbas Jaafar, one of Lebanon's most notorious drug traffickers, outside the city of...
02-Feb-2011
*On the road - The rise of itinerant criminal groups
For several months in mid-2006, the northwest region of Belgium suffered an extended wave of property crime: mainly burglaries and car thefts, but also fraud,...
11-Jan-2011
*Retirement plans - Russian mafiya boss considers his future
By 2010, criminal leader Aslan Usoyan, known as Ded Hasan, or Grandfather Hasan, had risen to become one of the dominant figures in Russia's complex...
06-Jan-2011
*Sixth form - Ethnic Albanian criminals thrive in New York
Despite the long-standing criminal dominance of the Cosa Nostra in the United States, an arrest in July underlined that the group may not be the...
09-Dec-2010
*Road kill - Canada's outlaw motorcycle gangs
In October, Maurice 'Mom' Boucher, a leading member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, was stabbed in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines penitentiary, Canada's only super-maximum security prison, situated...
23-Nov-2010
*Crossover criminals - The Savlokhov gang in post-Soviet Ukraine
The Savlokhov group was an organised criminal group that operated in post-Soviet Ukraine from the early 1990s until the end of the decade, when the...
05-Nov-2010
*Border crossing - People-smuggling into Australia
The most popular destinations for illegal migration, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the United...
29-Oct-2010
*Falling leaves - Japan's Matsuba-kai comes under pressure
The Matsuba-kai is one of the four major criminal groups operating in Japan's Kanto region, which encompasses Tokyo. The group was one of the dominant...
14-Oct-2010
*Sand banks - Caribbean islands tackle tax evasion
Many islands in the Caribbean have gained a dubious reputation as tax havens, where banking secrecy reigns and dirty money can be washed clean. This...
08-Oct-2010
*Korea criminals - Pyongyang's persistent illegal activities
On 16 December 2009, a Stockholm court jailed North Korean diplomat Pak Ung-sik and his wife Kang Son-hui for eight months for smuggling 230,000 cigarettes...
16-Sep-2010
*Criminal mines - Rebels continue to exploit the DRC's resources
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda: FDLR) is a largely Hutu rebel group that operates in the...
15-Sep-2010
*Coke fuelled - Criminal gangs cause instability in Jamaica
A hard-fought incursion by the police and army into the Tivoli Gardens stronghold of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke in the Jamaican capital Kingston on 24 May,...
05-Aug-2010