Non-Subscriber Extract
Hungary emerges as base for foreign organised crime groups
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| 17 July 2006 |
By Zsolt Reile
Hungary serves as a base for both national and foreign criminal groups that had become well established in the country by the mid-1990s, with mainly Russian-speaking Slavic groups taking control of the markets for illicit goods.
Due to the rapid political and social changes that followed the fall of the Soviet bloc, criminal groups quickly made financial gains and established their positions. As a result, they did not go through the kind of organisational and operative development experienced by groups such as the Italian or US Mafia. Perhaps as a consequence, most Hungarian organised crime groups tend to be less hierarchical, more fragile and at the same time more prone to violence in order to maintain or take control of illicit operations than some of their counterparts.
Several factors make Hungary attractive to organised crime groups:
- the country's geopolitical position. It shares borders with seven other countries and it was on (and it is now within) the borders of the EU, one of the largest markets for organised crime groups. As a transshipment country, Hungary's most vulnerable borders are the non-EU eastern and southern ones, such as those with Ukraine (cigarette and human trafficking), Romania (human trafficking and prostitution) and Serbia (drug and arms trafficking)
- compared to other countries in the region, Hungary has a well-developed transportation system and network, which facilitates and speeds up the operation of criminal enterprises
- Hungarian authorities were not established, trained and structured to cope with organised crime and, in the past, were not flexible enough to switch rapidly from their traditional duties.