Finnish professional criminals and their organisations in the 1990SA

This article concentrates on Finnish professional criminals and their organisations in Finland and in cross-border crime operations. It is based on qualitative empirical material. It focus on 14 different Finnish groups active in the 1990s in smuggling (alcohol, tobacco and drugs), and/or procuring prostitutes, and/or handling stolen goods. The objective of the study was twofold: 1) to gather collective information about the world of the Finnish professional criminals by studying the personal characteristics of the group members, the crimes they commit, and the structures of the criminal groups, 2) to compare differences and similarities of professional criminals and organised crime groups in Finland and abroad. The study clearly shows, that Finnish professional criminal groups are loosely structured networks that based on trade relations between the participants. The operational time of the groups is short and laundering of profits is not planned beforehand. The comparison of studied groups and internationally well known organised crime groups shows, that the Finns are a long way behind in all matters related on organised crime and its criminality. Finnish groups are loosely structured networks working on ad hog basis, at the moment and a certain time. International groups are monopolistic business enterprises that corrupt and threats state authorities and surrounding society to leave them in peace, promote its own business matters and reputation of top men

Improper influence against prosecutors and judges in Finland and Sweden: Findings from two national surveys 2008

The web survey was carried out in 2008, targeting all prosecutors and judges in office in Finland and Sweden. The forms of improper influence addressed in the questionnaire were harassment, threats, violence, vandalism and corruption. The reference period applied was the preceding 18 months. The survey was carried out simultaneously in Finland and in Sweden using an identical questionnaire. Judges and prosecutors have experience of all of the listed forms of improper influences. However, the dominant forms of influence are harassment and threats. Victimisation occurred primarily at the workplace, and only rarely in the leisure time of the respondents. Most of the perpetrators were individuals who were not connected with criminal organisations. This is the case in particular when the victim was a judge. Occasionally, however, organised crime representatives were also observed to be involved. This was true for prosecutors in particular. Swedish prosecutors were harassed and threatened by organised crime representatives significantly more often than Finnish prosecutors. It was unusual that family members of the civil servants concerned were victimised, but also some such instances were reported, some of them quite serious. Again, such incidents were more likely in Sweden than in Finland. According to the respondents, the employer organisations of the respondents had not done very much to prevent such incidents or to protect their employees from improper influences. The respondents were also of the opinion that much more should be done about the problem. The respondents had many suggestions for improvements, some of them quite sophisticated. These included, inter alia, ideas concerning the way their work was organised, the protection of personal data, access control, and the physical design of the offices and courtrooms. Overall, the responses demonstrate that the persons involved should be consulted carefully when planning and implementing new measures to prevent improper influences and to minimize their impact

Interim Project Report

The project reported here is a three country project, Estonia, Finland and the UK. It is funded by the European Commission AGIS Programme, The Directorate General Justice, Freedom and Security. It investigates the issues of corruption by organised crime in relation to border controls and immigration using as a case study the Finnish - Russian and the Estonian - Russian border, the methods of illegal facilitation of people across borders, the role of crime groups and networks as well as organised crime and the relationship between illegal facilitation and exploitation in the labour market

Organised crime, corruption and the movement of people across borders in the new enlarged EU: A case study of Estonia, Finland and the UK

The project reported here is a three-country project, Estonia, Finland and the UK. It is funded by the European Commission AGIS Programme, The Directorate General Justice, Freedom and Security. It investigates the issues of corruption by organised crime in relation to border controls and immigration using as a case study the Finnish-Russian and the Estonian-Russian border. It also considers the methods of facilitation of people across borders, the role of crime groups and networks as well as organised crime and the relationship between illegal facilitation and exploitation in the labour market. The aim of the research was to investigate whether at border points there was evidence of corruption of officials in order to facilitate people across the border illegally. The issue of organised crime was identified as an important factor in understanding how people might be moved across borders illegally. If there was evidence of organised crime it would suggest that transnational networks between organised crime groups might exist and that there are strategic forms of communication between the organised crime groups in order to facilitate the maximisation of profit through the movement of people. If such an influence of organised crime in ‘immigration crime’ were to be discovered then it would indicate that EU borders are porous and therefore readily exploited by organised crime groups. In Finland, particular attention was given to the issues concerning the ‘Development Plan of Border Guards’ and the planned cooperation in relation to Organised Crime and Combating Corruption. The contention was that the EU border with Russia is ‘weak’ and vulnerable to corruption at different levels: systemic, institutional and individual. Our argument was that corruption is used to maintain the flow of people across the border illegitimately by utilising existing legitimate channels. It was the Finnish view that organised crime groups used the Finnish – Russian and the Russian – Estonian borders to bring in illegal immigrants into the EU. Consequently the project was designed to take account of organised immigration crime and so was required to address the issue of human trafficking along with people smuggling and facilitation of people across borders. This raised a number of definitional issues and highlighted the varying perspectives between academic approaches to the problem and those of senior policy makers and operational staff