Organised crime in the UK, which involves trafficking in illegal immigrants, drug smuggling, fraud on the Internet and armed robbery, is increasing and spreading from cities to towns, according to a report by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), published yesterday.
For the first time the NCIS, a British government agency, published an unclassified version of its annual document, "The Threat From Serious and Organised Crime". It showed that the threat from organised criminal gangs has penetrated the professions and is "creating miserable victims" among the most vulnerable people in society.
Speaking at the launch in London, the director general of the NCIS, Mr John Abbott, said the police and other law enforcement bodies would provide a "robust response" to organised crime which, although not as pervasive as in other countries, represented a major component of the £50 billion sterling profit from crime each year.
The document classified criminal activities into three categories - high-impact, medium-impact and low-impact - by assessing the actual financial, personal or material harm caused. In a move that may cause concern among representatives of ethnic minorities in the UK, it also assessed organised crime on the basis of ethnic background. The report said 56 per cent of organised crime groups in the UK were involved in drugs trafficking, categorised as a high-impact crime, while 7 per cent were involved in kidnapping, classified as a low-impact crime. Of the 72 kidnaps reported to the NCIS in 1999, it was estimated that 90 per cent involved the abduction of criminals, nearly all of which related to unpaid debts.
Research showed that the majority of organised crime in the UK was carried out by "British Caucasians" who were involved in the full range of organised criminal activity, including fraud, kidnapping, tax evasion and armed robbery. The report identified concerns about the movement of West Indian drugs gangs from the inner cities to the towns and the growing trade in illegal immigrants.
Albanian criminals and Chinese groups, including the Triads and a group called Wo Shing Wo, were identified as dealing in the traffic of illegal immigrants. The Chinese groups, the report concluded, were heavily involved in abduction and often kidnapped their victims in order to extract money from their families in China.
The report said organised criminal gangs were targeting the Internet as a means of advertising the sale of drugs and organising football violence. Paedophile gangs were using the Internet to arrange meetings and download paedophile material.
Laundering the profits of organised crime was facilitated, the report said, by solicitors and accountants who were slow to report irregular transactions and accounts lodged by criminal gangs and by families who channelled money into businesses, such as clubs and pubs.