Terrorism

 

Comprehensive anti-terror solutions for risk mitigation and strategic threat management.

 

 

Organized Crime

 

 

Organized crime encompasses various illicit activities, such as large-scale hemp farms, human exploitation, illegal gambling, and money laundering.
These criminal enterprises generate substantial sums of money, which are often funnelled into legitimate industries like real estate and hospitality.
The intermingling of the upper and underworld is a cause for grave concern.
This document explores the practical application of intelligence-driven investigations in combating organized crime, shedding light on its possibilities,
limitations, and the selection process. Key Points:

 

 

1. Prioritizing Financial Disruption:

 

- Recognize the increased use of underground banking, as noted by Europol in Europe, emphasizing the need to tackle organized crime and its revenue streams.

- Highlight the financially driven nature of crimes, necessitating a concentrated effort to frustrate illicit financial gains.
  Drug trafficking for example, is largely financially driven and the fight should therefore focus on frustrating financial gain.

- Strengthen collaboration between law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies to enhance the detection and monitoring of suspicious financial transactions.

- Establish specialized units proficient in investigating financial crimes, dismantling money laundering networks, and employing asset forfeiture measures.

 

 

2. Intelligence-Driven Criminal Investigations:

 

- Emphasize the significance of an intelligence-driven approach for effective decision-making in combating organized crime. Interviews conducted at police departments and the National
  Criminal Investigation Department show that departments have a weighing procedure about the organized crime to be tackled. Often a choice is made based on so-called weighing
  documents and project proposals. The leading idea here is that one or more investigations can be selected based on broad information about several suspect groups. In practice, this does
  not always happen for various reasons. This may be due to the capacity within a police force and to the number of serious crimes that occur, to which the police must respond immediately.

 

- Establish specialized intelligence units tasked with analysing and disseminating actionable intelligence on organized crime networks. Too often the position of a police force is not equally
  strong in each crime area. In addition, it is not always possible to choose from several investigations, because the number of cases to be investigated is adjusted to the investigation       
  capacity. The weighing procedure basically implements the concept of intelligence-driven criminal investigation.

 

- Implement proactive monitoring systems to identify emerging trends, criminal methodologies, and key individuals involved in organized crime activities. Synthetic drugs, stand out in terms
  of the amount of information available on the subjects/suspects. Information from the Criminal Intelligence Unit and information from previous investigations are fundamental. Additionally,
  previous investigations also provide information about the position and conduct of the subjects and their mutual relationships, which provides leads for the tactical and strategic design of an
  investigation.

 

- n the areas of financial crime, human smuggling and trafficking, firearms and heroin, documents are usually much more limited in scope. More often here, a request for legal assistance, or
  foreign investigative information is the reason for the preparation of a document (especially in the case of human smuggling and trafficking and heroin), while in addition there is
  considerably less, or no, information on the subjects.

 

3. Strengthening Investigation Preparation and Adaptability:

 

 

- Consider the weighing process employed before initiating an investigation into organized crime, considering factors such as crime severity, investigative possibilities, information availability,
  and the specific crime domain. The weighing documents and project proposals do appear to provide information about why certain subjects or criminal activities are eligible for investigation
  (the who and what), but the way (how) the investigation is to be carried out is less pronounced in the documents. For example, the case of the "heavyweights," more attention is paid to
   failure and success factors, as revealed by previous investigations, but the question of why a renewed investigation would have a chance of success now receives little attention. That said,
  the nature of suspicion against certain subjects may simply be such that even with little chance of a successful investigation, the need for an investigation asserts itself.

 

- Highlight the role of the "intelligence-driven criminal investigation" concept as a foundation for prioritizing and tackling cases.

 

- Investigate the practical implementation of intelligence-led investigation, focusing on the preparation of investigations, the effectiveness of proposals, and the resulting outcomes.

 

- Address the limitations and challenges associated with the selection process, such as limited resources and varying information strengths across different crime areas. Understand why
  cases are stopped without prosecution. There are several reasons for this: the starting information about the suspects may turn out to be incorrect, the case may, on further reflection, prove
  to be of insufficient weight, lack of capacity may play a role, and a suspect may be included in another investigation.

 

- At regional and national levels, fixed criteria are used in part to assess which investigations should be taken up. The preparation of a project proposal requires more effort the better to be
  prepared. In this sense, there is a clear tension between the desire to be able to choose from a range of project proposals and the depth with which the preparation of those projects can be
  undertaken. The mixed investigations were mainly concerned - in combination - with trafficking in cocaine, synthetic drugs, extortion, weapons, and financial crime.

 

- Scientific Research and Documentation Center presented as an ideal overview of investigable offenses and suspects, from which the most important and promising investigations can then
  be selected. Despite the extensive preliminary work carried out as part of the selection procedure, it turns out that in practice investigations sometimes lead to different results from those
  they were initially aimed at and that the objective of an investigation sometimes has to be adjusted afterwards, for example because subjects are less important than initially suspected. It
  also happens that studies are discontinued altogether. This tempers the expectations one may have of the selection process. It is less easy to make "right choices" about whether or not to
  start an investigation and about how the investigation should be designed than is assumed in the concept of intelligence-led investigation.

 

 

To combat organized crime effectively, an intelligence-driven approach that prioritizes financial disruption, leverages actionable intelligence, and strengthens investigation preparation and adaptability is crucial.
By implementing these key points, law enforcement agencies can strategically target organized crime networks, dismantle their operations, and mitigate the threats they pose to society.
Although challenges and limitations exist, a concerted effort in intelligence-led investigations will enhance the effectiveness of law enforcement actions and contribute to a safer and more secure society.