ABSTRACT
The power and potential threat of transnational crime is predicated on corruption of government officials and law enforcement personnel. Nationalism, and its subsequent sense of collective identity, assists in the development, mobilization and coordination of organized crime. Crime syndicates employ private detectives and corrupt lawyers to protect themselves from law enforcement agencies. The electoral process can be corrupted when organized crime promotes and finances the elections of their chosen candidates. Organized crime was probably the detonator that blew up the economy and ruined the USSR, much as inchoate disorganized crime is disastrous to Russia’s economic development. Organized crime can also intimidate the press by swamping them with law suits stifling any further revelations they might have on organized crime and jeopardizing freedom of the press. For the most part, cultural differences, language incompatibility, and security considerations, keeps organized crime more transnational than international.
