Crime and Globalisations Activities 2003-2008

New Publications

2008

February 28-29, 2008

TNI and Nueva Sociedad/Friedrich Ebert Stiftung organised a seminar on  Alternative policies on civil security in Latin America)in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

2007

November 2-3, 2007

Tom Blickman participated at the conference on Tackling Money Laundering organized by the Utrecht School of Economics in Utrecht (Netherlands).

September 10-12, 2007

Tom Blickman participated at the Wilton Park conference Curbing Money Laundering: International Challenges.

June 12-13, 2007

TNI expert seminar on Money Laundering, Tax Evasion and Financial Regulation. The effectiveness of the Anti Money Laundering regime that has been built over the past two decades, and the more recent attempts to control tax evasion, capital flight and harmful tax competition have been subjects of a seminar organised by TNI. A selection of papers are available for download.

May 10, 2007

During the conference Tax Havens: Who pays the bill? in the Hague the official launch of Launch of Tax Justice Netherlands took place. Tax Justice Netherlands (TJ-NL) is a network of Dutch civil society organisations engaged in tax justice. The initiators of TJ-NL are Stichting Oikos, Oxfam Novib, SOMO, Attac, Transnational Institute (TNI) and Both Ends. The purpose of TJ-NL is to promote a just and fair tax system that is supportive to international development. TJ-NL hopes to influence Dutch politics, so that Dutch tax policies will become more coherent with development cooperation.

April 17-18, 2007

Tom Blickman of TNI participated at the seminar Capitalismo criminal y organización mafiosa de la sociedad (Criminal capitalism and mafia-like organization of society) at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.
His presentation Políticas globales frente a las economías ilegales: El caso del blanqueo de dinero, is published in: Capitalismo criminal: Ensayos críticos, Colección estudios politicos y sociales, Febrero de 2008.

2006

July 6-7, 2006

Tom Blickman participated at a Workshop on Tax, Poverty and Finance for Development, organised by the Tax Justice Network and the Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs (AABA) at the University of Essex, Colchester.

June 9, 2006

Tom Blickman participated in the Amsterdam Forum, a talk show of Radio Netherlands. The programme 'Are the rich hindering the fight against poverty?' was featuring Raymond Baker, who is directing the Global Financial Flows programme at the Center for Intarnational Policy (CIP) in Washington DC. The programme looked at the network of tax havens, money laundering, tax evasion and asking how much of a problem this is in terms of denying developing countries essential capital in the fight against poverty, but also in terms of crime and terrorism.

April 24-28, 2006

TNI participated at the 15th session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) in Vienna.

March 13-18, 2006

TNI participated at the 49th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna.

2005

November 20, 2005

Tom Blickman participated at the network meetings in London that were hosted by The Beckley Foundation: the International Drug Policy Consortium, a group of non-governmental organisations and professional networks, and the International Network for Drug Policy Analysis, a network of more academic drug policy analysis experts.

June 17, 2005

On the occasion of the G-8 Summit that took place in Gleneagles, Scotland, from July 6-8, 2005, a website publication was produced on G8 and Security.

April 28-29, 2005

TNI Expert Seminar Global Enforcement Regimes. Transnational Organised Crime, International Terrorism and Money Laundering Amsterdam. The seminar looked at the developments in the multilateral agreements and conventions on drug control, money laundering, transnational organised crime and terrorism and their dangers for civil liberties, human rights and sovereignty, and the question of who is setting the agenda on these issues.
A report of the seminar proceedings was finalised in July, and one of the papers presented was reworked into a briefing, The Global Fix: The Construction of a Global Enforcement Regime, written by Michael Woodiwiss and David Bewley-Taylor, that was published in October.

March 21-23, 2005

Tom Blickman participated at the Wilton Park conference Drug Abuse: How can it be reduced?

February 23, 2005

Tom Blickman attended the conference Voices from the Field: Local Initiatives and New Research on Central American Youth Gang Violence, in Washington DC. The conference was organised by the Inter-American Coalition for the Prevention of Youth Violence (IACPV), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF), and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO). The topic of the conference was Gang Violence in Central America.

February, 2005

Tom Blickman joined a research mission to investigate the illicit diamond industry in Matto Grosso do Sul and Rondonia. The mission was conducted by the Canadian researcher Shawn Blore for the Canadian NGO Partnership Africa Canada. Valuable insight was gained on the illicit diamond industry around the Roosevelt indigenous reserve and the involvement of international and national production and trafficking networks. See: The Failure of Good Intentions, by Shawn Gerald Blore, May 2005.

January 26-31, 2005

At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in Brazil, TNIs Drugs and Democracy programme and Crime and Globalisation project presented a briefing on the drugs and crime situation in Brazil, A Pointless War: Drugs and Violence in Brazil. Jointly with the Brazilian partner Koinonia presentations were held at two different panels on the drugs and conflict situations in Brazil and Latin America with the participation of about 150 people.
The briefing was also presented in the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro, with the participation of some state (Carlos Minc and Chico Alencar of the PT in Rio) and national representatives (Fernando Ferro of the PT in Pernambuco). While in Rio a trip was organised to the favelas Vicario Geral and Furquim Mendes with the help of a local NGO, the Instituto Brasileiro de Inovações em Saúde Social (IBISS) in order to put the partners and parliamentarians in touch with the realities of gang and police violence in the favelas.

2004

December 18, 2004

TNI organised a workshop on Gangs and Governance: Failed Governance in Marginalized Urban Areas.

September 2-4, 2004

Tom Blickman presented a paper on "The Ecstasy Industry in the Netherlands in a Global Perspective" at the 6th Colloquium on Cross-Border Crime: Crime and Economy and Crime Economy, co-sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and the University of Tilburg, in Berlin. The presentation was published in "The organised crime economy: Managing crime markets in Europe", Petrus C. van Duyne, Klaus von Lampe, Maarten van Dijck & James L. Newell (eds.), Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2005. A reworked and updated version was published as The Ecstasy Industry: Exploring the Global Market in December 2004. A summary of the briefing was published in Narcomafie in its June 2005 issue: Si fa presto a dire Olanda: Il mercato globale delle droghe sintetiche.

May 11-15, 2004

Tom Blickman attended the annual session of the UN Crime Commission in Vienna.

2003

December 5-6, 2003

TNI Expert Seminar The Economic Impact of the Illicit Drug Industry in Amsterdam. This was the first in a series of seminars planned by the project. The aim was to assess the global volume of the illegal drugs industry and to look at where the illegal proceeds of the industry are going, including financial flows, investments in the legal economy and alleged funding of international terrorism. Participants were critical of the widespread recourse to inflated figures, doubtful evaluation processes and the institutional need for numbers. They stressed how difficult it is to collect and interpret data on illegal drugs, and were sceptical of the plausability of most existing estimates. There was agreement, however, that the economic impact of the illicit drugs industry is more likely to be significant in less developed countries with weaker institutions.
Read the report of the seminar proceedings. A summary of the report was published in the September 2004 issue of the Italian monthly Narcomafie as "I conti non tornano: L'impatto economico dell'industria degli stupefacenti".

October 8-9, 2003

Tom Blickman attended the International Synthetic Drugs Enforcement Conference, organised by the Dutch Unit Synthetic Drugs (USD) in The Hague.

August 14, 2003

Damián Zaitch of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and Tom Blickman of TNI presented the research on Synthetic Drug Trafficking in Amsterdam at the World Congress of Criminology in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) during a workshop on Drugs and Crime.

August, 2003

Research mission to the marihuana cultivation areas in the Northeast of in Brazil (the state of Pernambuco).

March, 2003

Presentation of the book Synthetic Drug Trafficking in Three European Cities: Major Trends and the Involvement of Organised Crime, published by Gruppo Abele in Turin (Italy). TNIs Tom Blickman coordinated the research on Amsterdam (one of the three city's involved inthe project) and wrote the chapter Synthetic Drug Trafficking in Amsterdam. A web site European Market Ecstasy Trafficking was also launched. The study was described as "a pioneering work on the synthetic drugs market in Western Europe and a good example for international research on organized crime."
TNI's Tom Blickman was interviewed on 18 March 2003 by the NOS Journaal, the main news programme on Dutch public TV, broadcasted at prime time (20 hrs) about conclusions of the project. Amsterdam FM, a local radio station, again interviewed him the next day. The results of the research were also reported in some Dutch newspapers: "Xtc-markt verzadigd: pil 3 euro" ("Ecstasy market saturated: pill 3 euro") in Het Parool, 19 March 2003, a national daily newspaper with major circulation in Amsterdam; "Voor 0,75 eurocent aan xtc de hele avond door" ("Partying a whole night on 0,75 euro of ecstasy") in De Volkskrant, Dutch daily newspaper, 31 March 2003.
The book was the final product of a the research project Synthetic Drug Trafficking in Three European Cities: Major Trends and the Involvement of Organised Crime that was promoted by Gruppo Abele (Italy) in co-operation with the Transnational Institute and the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Activities (IECAH - Spain), with the support of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) based in Italy. The project was co-financed by the European Commission, DG Justice and Home Affairs. It began at the end of 2001 and continued throughout 2002 in three European cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona and Turin. In Amsterdam the research team (consisting of the criminologists Dirk J. Korf, Dina Siegel and Damián Zaitch) was coordinated by Tom Blickman of TNI.