Anonymous ID: 4961c5 March 11, 2019, 5:37 p.m. No.5631632   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>1780 >>1991 >>1993 >>2148

>>5631538

 

urasian TOC groups are politically and financially motivated organized crime groups influenced by, associated with, or originating from the former Soviet Union or Central Europe. These criminal groups continue to thrive outside their borders in numerous countries around the world, including the United States. It is estimated that Eurasian TOC groups have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to U.S. businesses, investors, and taxpayers.

 

Evidence and studies suggest Eurasian TOC groups no longer conform to the typical hierarchal structure of traditional organized crime groups, but instead are divided into supporting networks, or cells, each having a different function or responsibility while sharing a common overarching goal. This framework allows cells to operate independently, limiting their contact with members of the entire organization, thus protecting high level organized crime figures.

 

Eurasian TOC groups often engage in a myriad of criminal activity including healthcare fraud, securities and investment fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, extortion, auto theft, interstate transportation of stolen property, robbery, attempted murder, and murder.

 

The roots of Eurasian organized crime in the United States lie with the Vory V Zakone, or “thieves in law.” These are career criminals who banded together for support and profit in the Soviet prison system. During the Soviet period, their leaders, or “shop managers,” were illicitly paid a 30 percent margin to acquire scarce consumer goods and divert raw materials and finished goods from production lines for the benefit of Nomenklatura, or the educated elite, and criminals.

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, members allied themselves with corrupt public officials to acquire the control of industries and resources that were being privatized. This gave the syndicate a one-time infusion of wealth and supplied the infrastructure for continuing cash flows and opportunities to launder criminal proceeds. In February 1993, Boris Yeltsin, the first elected president of the Federation of Russian States, said, “Organized crime has become the No. 1 threat to Russia’s strategic interests and to national security…Corrupted structures on the highest level have no interest in reform.”

 

Organized crime members first emerged in the West in the 1970s when Soviet Refuseniks were allowed to emigrate to Europe, Israel, and the United States. Among the Refuseniks were criminals who sought to exploit their new-found freedoms. These criminals helped the major criminal groups expand to the West when the Soviet Union collapsed and the people of the region were able to move about freely.

 

These groups based in the former Soviet Union have also defrauded newly formed governments of billions of dollars, as industries and resources formerly owned by the government have been privatized. They profit through tax-evasion schemes and using corrupt officials to embezzle government funds. Their activity threatens to destabilize the emerging political institutions and economies of the former Soviet Union, where nuclear weapons remain deployed. The potential political and national security implications of this destabilization cannot be ignored.

 

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/organized-crime