Israeli mafia
The Israeli mafia (Hebrew: מאפיה ישראלית, romanized: Mafiyah Yisrelit, or ארגוני פשע בישראל, Irguni pesha bəYisrael, "organized crime in Israel") are the organized crime groups operating in Israel or consisting of Israeli members. There are 16 crime families operating in Israel, five major groups active on the national level and 11 smaller organizations. There are six Jewish crime families active and three Arab crime families.[1] Many heads and members of the crime groups have either been killed or are in prison.[2][3]
The major crime groups are the Abergils, the Abutbuls, the Alperons, the Dumranis, the Shirazis, the Amir Molnar and the Zeev Rosenstein syndicates.[2] The illegal activities they are engaged in include operating casinos and other forms of gambling inside and outside Israel, car theft, prostitution, human trafficking, money laundering, murder, protection and extortion rackets, loan sharking and drug dealing.
According to Israel's former Police Commissioner David Cohen, Israeli crime organizations had penetrated the formal economic sector and local governments, and "equipped themselves with large quantities of combat means explosives and arms." In a mob war starting in the early 2000s between the crime families, several crime bosses were killed. It also cost the lives of innocent bystanders.[4] The Iakhbal is the Israeli Special Police Unit that fights organized crime.
The immigration of Egyptian and Moroccan Jews to Israel and their settlement in the more impoverished neighborhoods led to the creation of crime families among Maghrebi Jews.[10] This is evident in the fact that a large number of Israeli organized criminals have fled to Morocco in recent years.[11] Israeli crime families of Moroccan Jewish descent expanded their operations to Europe and the US, especially with their involvement in drug trafficking.[12] Some of Israel's more well-known crime families are of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish descent: the Abergil Organization as well as the Abutbul and Domrani clans are originally from Morocco,[13] the Alperon clan came from Egypt, and the Shirazi clan from Iran.
Israeli-Arab organized crime groups were formed in Israel. Some Arab-majority cities and towns are home to local crime families.[14] Clans like Tayibe based Abdel-Kader family are involved in extortion, drug and weapon trafficking, fraud as well as money laundering, often in cooperation with their Jewish counterparts.[15] One Arab crime family, the Jarushi family from Ramla, is one of the most powerful crime families in Israel.[16] The Qarajah crime family, also originated from Ramla, was used to have a long time blood feud with the Jarushis, resulting in the death of 24 people in the 1990. The feud ended when the Qarajahs were forced by the government to have a cease fire agreement whereby they will leave Ramla to settle in any other Arab settlement. After no other settlement agreed to house them, the government eventually settled them in the Jewish town Harish.[17] The Abu Latifs, a Druze family from Rameh, which operates mainly in the north, is one of main three Arab crime organizations in Israel.[18]
Another example was the criminal gang around Moussa Aliyan in New York City whose main business was the importation of heroin.[
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_mafia#In_Mexico
The Russian mafia in Israel began with the mass immigration of Russian Jews to Israel in 1989.[20] Jewish Russian crime bosses such as Semion Mogilevich acquired Israeli citizenship and laundered money through Israel.
The Russian mafia saw Israel as an ideal place to launder money, as Israel's banking system was designed to encourage aliyah, the immigration of Jews, and the accompanying capital. Following the trend of global financial deregulation, Israel had also implemented legislation aimed at easing the movement of capital. Combined with the lack of anti-money laundering legislation, Russian organised crime found it an easy place to transfer ill-gotten gains. In 2005, police estimated that Russian organised crime had laundered between $5 and 10 billion in the fifteen years since the end of the Soviet Union. Non-Jewish criminals such as Sergei Mikhailov sought to get Israeli passports, using fake Jewish documentation.[21]
Russian and Ukrainian Jewish criminals have also been able to set up networks in the United States, following the large migration of Russian Jews to New York City and Miami, but also in European cities such as Berlin and Antwerp. Russian-Jewish mobsters include Marat Balagula, Evsei Agron and their respective criminal gangs in the United States. Soviet-Jewish criminal groups in the United States are involved in racketeering, prostitution, drug trafficking, extortion, and gasoline tax fraud as well as murder.[22]