ABSTRACT
The English proverb, ‘money makes the world go round’, reflects a perception within Western popular culture that an innate relationship exists between money, power and influence. Within academia, the relationship between these concepts has been open to debate; often reaching the conclusion that money (economics) and power (politics), and subsequently political influence, are distinctly independent phenomena. This perception is reflected in the often drawn statement that organized crime and terrorist groups would not find common cause because the inherent differences between political/ideological motivation and profit maximization are too significant. Evidence indicating the contrary, however, does exist, and has been recognized by relatively small groups of scholars since the 1990s. After 9/11, however, there has been considerably more attention devoted to outlining the dimensions and dynamics of the crime–terror nexus.
