ABSTRACT
International white-collar crime and illegal markets, commonly described as 'organized crime', are not new phenomena.! We have been hearing about drug trafficking, smuggling of various commodities, environmental pollution, exploitation of Third World countries by transnational corporations and other kinds of misdeeds for a long time.2 However, the global age is accompanied by a rise both in the risk of transnational crime and in official concern about it. This rise is fuelled chiefly by the fast integration of world markets and speedy conclusion of transactions thanks to technological advances, the gradual loss of border controls and the lack of appropriate normative and regulatory frameworks. Since the end of the Cold War and in the context of the proliferation of new states, new nationalisms and threats posed by fundamentalism, some forms of crime are regarded as national or global security threats.3
