Bulletin Board # 52

Hi Tim

The proverbial ****, I understand, is shortly to hit the fan here as a result of hidden cameras in the room/s of a very well known hotel in this country. I understand they were originally installed to monitor 'staff theft' problems but it seems someone forgot to switch off the recorders when the guests checked in!!!!

I am informed that a certain legal bod is attempting to track down guests that stayed between certain dates to see if they feel motivated enough to take action...should be fun...

Regards
Nick



Keep us posted on what happens, Nick

Tim



This "Bob" says, I have been to China on 8 different occassions and failed to find a device one time. This was a physical search only.


The following information came to me over a period of several days. I thought you security types might find it of interest. Feel free to pass it on if you think it is important enough.

Tim Johnson



Tim,
This may be of interest to you international business people.
I found this on Spyking and it mentions Kevin Murray and Kroll in Hong Kong. Scott.

From: Scott Fuller fullers@fullergroup.com
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 09:32:40 +1100

Reply to:
fdbug@fullergroup.com ffullers@fullergroup.com www.fullergroup.com China's Spies Target Corporate America

In the great game of economic espionage, China is emerging as a bold new player. Its primary mission: to get its hands on the world's most advanced technology.

Edward A. Robinson
Reporter Associate: Ann Harrington

or China's all-powerful spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, Bin Wu was a chen di yu, a "fish at the bottom of the ocean"--a long-term agent operating under deep cover. The ministry had sent Wu, a 33-year-old former philosophy professor from Nanjing, to the U.S. to acquire technology and military items and export them back to China through an MSS-controlled front company in Hong Kong. A member of the pro-democracy movement, Wu had been told to spy or face arrest. So this reluctant agent approached the FBI's elite counterintelligence office in 1991 with an invaluable gift: a chance to use him as a telescope into the shadowy world of Chinese intelligence operations.

Wu seemed the ideal double agent. He was motivated, smart, and articulate, and formed a strong bond with his FBI handler. And according to court records, no sooner had the bureau started running Wu (code name: Succor Delight) than he delivered the identities of his MSS handlers, their front companies, other Chinese agents operating in the U.S., and even information on a group of Yugoslavians who were trying to purchase Chinese rocket launchers.

But in 1992, Wu's cover was blown, and today, instead of operating as an FBI "foreign national asset," Wu sits in a federal prison in western Pennsylvania serving a ten-year sentence for violating the Arms Export Control Act. In an interview with FORTUNE, he says that he has filed a petition to avoid the customary fate of freed foreign felons--being deported home after he is released in 2001. "I hope I can stay here after what I did for this country," Wu says in carefully phrased English. "There is no doubt in my mind that if the Chinese get their hands on me, I will die."

As this disturbing episode suggests, China has for some time been spying on corporate America. What's only beginning to be understood is the scope and depth of its intelligence-gathering apparatus. "This is serious business," says Sen. Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "China is trying to make the great leap forward, technologically speaking, and it has great needs for information, especially in the high-tech field. This is going to be an ongoing challenge for both law enforcement and business."

Indeed. Intelligence officials, members of Congress, corporate security directors, and former Chinese spies themselves tell FORTUNE that over the past several years Chinese-backed industrial spying has increased dramatically against U.S. business. In a soon-to-be-released survey of 1,300 major U.S. companies, the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), an association for corporate-security types, found that America business now sees China as its No. 1 foreign economic-espionage threat.

According to the experts, China's commercial spy apparatus has been targeting two fronts simultaneously: the U.S. government and corporate America. Suspicions that Beijing sought to pilfer classified economic reports from Washington are already creating a buzz on Capitol Hill. Senate Republicans investigating the Clinton campaign fundraising scandal have suggested that John Huang, formerly assigned to the Taiwan desk in the Commerce Department, may have passed secret economic and trade material to China. Democrats respond that the Republicans have no hard evidence to prove such a charge. Huang's lawyer denies the charge.

But the evidence for a PRC assault on corporate America is stronger. Recent examples:

. Amgen discovered that a Chinese spy had infiltrated its organization and was trying to steal a vial of cell cultures for Epogen, now a $1.2-billion-a-year anemia drug.

. A Chinese spy in Hong Kong was recently caught using sophisticated telecommunications software to secretly listen in on sensitive phone conversations between American executives.

. A Chinese engineer working at a Boulder, Colo., software company allegedly stole proprietary source code and peddled it to a PRC company. As a result, the company went out of business.

To be sure, China is not alone in this game. In January, FBI Director Louis Freeh testified to Congress that the companies or governments of 23 countries are currently involved in the illicit acquisition of U.S. trade secrets and that 12 of those have aggressively "targeted U.S. proprietary economic information and critical technologies."

Before China emerged as a major new player in this old game, Japan and France clearly led the pack. In the 1980s, Hitachi was caught trying to steal secrets from IBM. More recently the Commerce Department warned American aerospace executives to watch out for spying by French intelligence at the Paris Air Show--Hughes Aircraft pulled out altogether. Of course, the U.S. itself is not above blame. Just last year Germany reportedly accused an American diplomat of committing economic espionage by trying to obtain information on high technology. It expelled the diplomat, who was believed to be a CIA officer operating undercover.

And now, into this wilderness, steps China. Says Richard Heffernan, a corporate security consultant based in Branford, Conn.: "It is a naive company that thinks that just because it doesn't have a venture in China, it's not at risk of being penetrated here at home." Late last year a concerned Congress passed a law that requires the U.S. intelligence community to prepare a classified report specifically on Chinese intelligence activities, citing economic-espionage operations as one of its top priorities. On top of that, the U.S. Trade Representative's Office is insisting that the Chinese government take action against industrial espionage and product piracy as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization.

The Chinese government flatly denies that it is involved in economic espionage. China does say that it is eager to absorb technology from around the world and sometimes uses its market might to get foreign companies to share their technology. Explains Yu Shuning, the press secretary at the Chinese Embassy: "For our modernization program we are trying hard to learn from others. But everything is done on a commercial basis for everyone's mutual benefit. When you sell your products to China, you earn a profit, and in this kind of deal we should benefit also, and sometimes that may be from technology transfer, but this is always done through lawful, normal means."

Chinese industrial spying is believed to run the gamut from routine competitive intelligence gathering of company information on Websites and at trade shows to the theft of company trade secrets from offices and labs. No one really knows for sure the value of the secrets stolen or which industries have been hit the hardest--although computers, biotech, and defense probably top the list.

As experts take a closer look at China's intelligence operation, they are also finding it difficult to determine how organized it is. Is Beijing using its spy services to direct an overarching program of industrial espionage in the U.S., or is Chinese spying driven primarily by independent black-marketers out to pocket illicit profits?

Nicholas Eftimiades, an intelligence officer with the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and author of the book Chinese Intelligence Operations, believes that Beijing's intelligence services have erected an extensive spy network in the U.S. that bears all the hallmarks of a John le Carre spy novel. Eftimiades says the network focuses as much on netting commercial secrets as on traditional military and political targets.

According to Eftimiades, officials at the Ministry of State Security, which runs civilian intelligence activities domestically and abroad, "task" agents to acquire products or data requested by Chinese industry. "They request thousands of items from abroad every year," agrees Stanislav Lunev, a former colonel in the Soviet Union's military-intelligence branch, the GRU, who was stationed in Beijing. Some of those items might be off-the-shelf products like a fertilizer, a machine tool, or a compact-disk player, and the Chinese enterprise requesting the item might simply be seeking to harmlessly "reverse engineer" it. But many of the items sought are also trade secrets, says the former Russian spy, who defected to the U.S. in 1992. "Only now are American companies starting to open their eyes and see the level of Chinese espionage in their country," says the old cold warrior, with a wry smile.

Both Eftimiades and Lunev say the MSS recruits professionals, college students, and scientists to be agents in the U.S. Some are instructed to ingrain themselves in companies, universities, and government, and provide a lifetime of service to their spymasters. Information funneled back to China could be as harmless as an annual report or as harmful as proprietary computer code developed after years of R&D spending. One such former Chinese agent, who fears for family members back home and has asked to remain anonymous, has told FORTUNE about a school in Nanjing that trains these spies. Over the past decade, this former agent has periodically recognized fellow graduates from the school working in companies from Silicon Valley to Massachusetts and even in the halls of government in Washington.

Systematic as all this sounds, there is also evidence that a great deal of Chinese espionage is actually not so organized, but rather the work of freebooters. Though they might exploit connections to the Chinese state, most of these types are operating on their own for lucre, pure and simple. Take the case involving Amgen, the biotechnology firm based in Thousand Oaks, Calif. In 1993 the company's information-security director, William Boni, learned through an anonymous letter that an employee was poised to steal a vial of cell cultures for Epogen, a drug that helps kidney dialysis patients and that had generated $587 million in revenue for Amgen that year. Boni pulled the accused thief's phone records and saw that over the past few weeks the man had placed more than 70 personal telephone calls to China.

Working with the Hong Kong office of Kroll Associates, the New York private-investigation firm, Boni learned that the employee was hunting for Epogen buyers in China and had, through intermediaries, made contact with Chinese government officials. Boni and his Kroll associates put the employee and his partner under surveillance. Then, on a Sunday evening, the spies entered Amgen's labs, and Boni's team pounced. Stunned, the employee confessed to the plot. Yet Amgen chose not to pursue any criminal action because Boni had stopped him before any real damage had been done. All the company did was fire the man.

Chinese spy operations can run from the sublime to the ridiculous. In one episode that smacked more of Maxwell Smart than James Bond, members of a Chinese scientific delegation at a Paris trade show were seen dipping their neckties into a photo-processing solution made by Agfa, the German photography company. Apparently the delegates--much to the amusement of French security officials --hoped to analyze "specimens" of the solution taken from their ties.

Yet other incidents reveal a high degree of sophistication. In one case three years ago, security consultant Heffernan exposed a Chinese spy in Hong Kong who was trying to learn an American high-tech company's secrets by manipulating a piece of telephone software known as executive override. That feature allows anyone to listen in on lines. The spy, however, had disabled the warning tone indicating the call is being monitored and had used the program to eavesdrop on sensitive conversations between executives. Fortunately, the spy left an obvious electronic fingerprint on his handiwork, and he was caught. Even though the company's top brass were furious, little was done, other than sending the exposed operative on his way.

Why did Heffernan's clients let the guy go? Actually, this reaction is not uncommon. Companies victimized by espionage are concerned that going to the authorities will publicize the incident and leave the impression that they don't take their security seriously or are even incompetent. Such a disclosure can dampen a stock price, scare off customers, or in serious cases topple senior executives. "When a company gets hit by a spy, it's like it suddenly has a sexually transmitted disease," says Kevin D. Murray, a New Jersey-based specialist in electronic-surveillance detection. "Everyone wants something done to prevent it from spreading, but no one wants to talk about it, even though talking about it, sharing the experience, is the only way to make it safer for everyone to do business."

Chinese espionage poses a special set of worries. The last thing U.S. firms want to do is antagonize Chinese officials, who hold the keys to a market with 1.2 billion people--something an embarrassing public accusation of spying is likely to do. James P. Chandler, president of the National Intellectual Property Law Institute in Washington, D.C., says scores of American companies are continually parrying Chinese penetration, both in ventures in China itself and at home in the U.S., but making little noise about it publicly. His latest message: Corporations should report incidents of spying to the authorities. Chandler argues that when a victim keeps a crime hushed up, it sends a dangerous message that it's okay to steal intellectual property. And that will encourage countries like China to keep on spying. "The gravity of what's involved here has not come home to a lot of U.S. industry, from lawyers on up to senior management," says Chandler.

That said, Americans should be careful not to brand all Chinese businessmen as spies, especially at a time when U.S.-China relations are already strained. In fact, one can argue that there's a gray area between spying and good old-fashioned competitive intelligence. "We need to be very careful with these kinds of issues," says Evan Feigenbaum, a fellow with the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University and an expert on China. "People can be very incautious with the term 'espionage,' and the simple fact that the Chinese are interested in technology doesn't mean it's espionage."

So there lies the dilemma. On the one hand, a CEO must protect his trade secrets. But he also doesn't want to create a suffocating, Orwellian culture that stifles the free flow of ideas--something that has become an increasingly vital ingredient in today's knowledge economy. The fact is, companies must strike a fine balance between protecting their intellectual property and encouraging open discourse with those outside their corporate walls. And with China's bold new entrance into the industrial spy game, that's not going to be easy.



Where the Spies Are
in a survey conducted by the American Society for Industrial Security,1,300 American companies were asked to cite the foreign country that poses the greatest economic-espionage threat. Here is how they ranked (preliminary results):
  1. China
  2. Japan
  3. France
  4. U.K.
  5. Canada

Canada Tim, Canada Reference your posting of 20 March regard Communist China:

Were you aware that now Communist China has control of both the Atlantic and Pacific ports of the Panama Canal, which Jummy Carter had so generously gave away?

Hutchinson Port Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) through Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd, which is controlled by the Chinese government, was awarded a 25 year lease to operate the Atlantic and Pacific ports at each end of the canal. Among the terms of lease agreement is that Hutchinson will have veto rights regarding use of the land adjacent to the ports, which would include US military bases. Another is that Hutchinson will be exempt from Panama's labor laws for three years. Did anyone notice that the Panamanian lawyer for Hutchinson (and COSCO) in that deal was Hugo Torrijos, who is also the head of the Panamanian port authority that awarded the contract to COSCO? U.S. intelligence was sure caught napping on that one.

By now we have learned about questionable Chinese campaign contributions and their visits to the White House. The Clinton administration permitted COSOCO to take over the entire 133 acre former U.S. Navy station at Long Beach, California, for which the Chinese government, via COSCO, is to pay $14.5 million a year. Terms of that 20 year lease agreement, however, also call for Long Beach to pay approximately $235 million for modernization of the facility. Also, a penalty clause would give COSCO $32 million in dockside cranes plus about $200,000 for moving expenses. That contract, by the way, was finalized shortly after the Feds caught one of COSCO's ship trying to smuggle about 2,000 CHICOM Ak-47's into Oakland, California.

As if that were not enough, COSCO received a $138 million US government loan guarantee to build four ships in Mobile, Alabama, which COSCO has 25 years to pay off. (Does anyone want to take any bets on that happening?) Many American companies can not get any help like that from our own government.

COSCO, through Hutchinson, recently took over control of the port facility in Singapore. COSCO is now in Vancouver, Canada, Long Beach, California, Balboa and Cristobal, Panama, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, as well as many other locations worldwide.

The bottom line of all this appears to be long-term job security for TSCM types.

Thanks to Bob for the info. He's been at it again.


Ju Yijie is the head of the Chinese Economic Trade Development Office there in panama City, and many suspect that he is with the CHICOM Ministry of State Security (MSS). He is quite ruthless. Last year he undermined the "Universal Congress on the Panama Canal" held in Panama City and sponsored by Panamanian President Perez Balladares. Although alot of heads of state and top level corporate executives were invited, he managed to intimidate many of them so much that they declined to attend. President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan was there, but he was greatly overshadowed by Ju Yijie. Significantly, Chang Yung-fa, who is the head of the largest shipping company in Taiwan, Evergreen Marine Corporation, backed down and did not attend.

As you probably have heard through your own lines, the CHICOMs are very active in SIGINT and COMINT operations, and we can expect greatly increased esppionage activities from both the COSCO ships and from their facilities at Long Beach. From other sources, I hear that they are getting heavily involved with interceptions of communications from Satellites. Anyone, especially contractors, who has a security sense at all should be contacting you folks.

That reminds me, why aren't you in the business of checking and certifying SCIF's to make sure that they are secure and do not have any leakage? That is what I used to do, i.e., check them in accordance with NSA 66-1 (or was it 65-1? I don't remember now) That was good business, and there was a tremendous profit margine for anyone who knew what they were doing.

Catch ya later,

Bob



Bob,

Last things first:
SCIF certification is almost a past thing. I've had an opportunity to do several preliminary inspections to insure the facility was prepared (to the best of my ability), but I wasn't even aware that they were farming those things out. The government teams always came after I did; mostly OSI, based on my intel.

As for the other things, contractors are restricted by the bucks they can spend and the money isn't typiocally there until after the damage has been done. They are almost as bad as the government: if you don't catch a spy inside the classified files, there is no threat. That appears to be the attitude.

I am getting a few inquiries about doing work on a contract basis for certain contractor facilities. But most of that will be let to the beltway bandits; they have the resources and the money to go after those things. I've always been discarded out-of-hand when it came to bidding. Once, I was with another organization and their response was that the contract manager (me) didn't have enough knowledge in the area of TSCM. I pretty much gave up at that point, knowing the bid were already weighed against me. (BTW, I know who wrote the specs, who had some oversight on decisions and who ended up getting the contract. Guess what big umbrella all that activity feel under?

Government contracts probably aren't worth the effort to go after. You have to have unlimited resources (personnel and equipment) available and in place before you can even bid and that is no guarantee they will look at you. Then they write the contract in such a way that you have to be ready to travel on a couple of days notice with little advance knowledge of where you're going or how you'll get your equipment past foreign customs.

I'll bet I sound like I've been eating sour grapes. I wish I was. But right now, I feel like crap. I definately have to get to the doctor tomorrow and see what the heck is wrong with me.

If you hear of any of those fabulous TSCM jobs just lying around waiting to be plucked, definately keep me in mind. Although I don't see how I'll be able to work them into my immediate future schedule. I'm already doing one to two jobs a week and referring some to other people. Damn, I need to win a lottery so I can hire someone else. :>)

Tim



Tim,

A good book for insight is, CHINESE INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS" by Nick Eftimiades, who is former CIA and now a China specialist with DIA/Counter-intelligence. The book came out about three years ago.



Hi Tim,

Something from - you guessed it - yet another Bob.

Here are a couple of items found recently while travelling on business:

  1. Transmitter found in a hotel room - accidentally located while unpacking. The hotel was/is frequently used by corporate types on business travel to Dallas. A Scout confirmed that it was emitting RF energy in the 900 mhz band although the frequency "danced around" leading me to believe it was Spread Spectrum. A quick sweep with a scanner found a "buzz" near 925 mhz - further indicating SS. Popping what appeared to be a small lithium cell off the circuit board ended all RF activity. How did I find it? - it was taped to the underside of a drawer in a chest. One end had loosened and dropped down - jamming the drawer - and as Paul Harvey might say - the rest is history.
  2. Another hotel room - in the UK - Strong RF signal of indeterminate origin - near 801 mhz. I had requested a "non-smoking" room when I made reservations. I went back to the front desk and asked for a smoking room and got it. The next room was quieter. This could have been stray RF from down the street but I didn't feel comfortable with it - thus the move to another room.
I was wondering - has anyone else made any accidental discoveries they might share?

The type of business I'm in is extremely competitive (Telecom instrumentation and test equipment) but it usually isn't that cut-throat. None the less - with the Xxxxxx xx Xxxxxxxxxxx on the loose out there, and others like them, it seems that it is becoming easier to stumble into weird situations. (Oops, better delete that reference to the "church" - we don't want to get a rattlesnake in the mailbox.)

Any thoughts on the risks of business travel? Best Regards,

"Bob"


Here's something else from another "Bob".

Tim,

I've been following the recent information on the Chinese threat to our national security as well as our industrial might. As an old navy SIGSEC operator I know how good these operator can be. I also know how easy most Americans make it for these collection operators. We were always briefing COMSEC and OPSEC to various commands. Industry needs to learn the lessons the military learned the hard way.

I've been out of the navy almost 10 years now and I'm amazed that I'm back doing threat briefings dealing with the same problems I did 10 years ago. Only now the bad guys are Russian Organized Crime and the Drug Cartel. Instead of briefing military commands I'm briefing the Federal Law Enforcement community. What really scares me is their attitudes, almost across the board they feel they can't be monitored, bugged or taped. Yet they put extreme emphasis on Title 3 operations (legal wiretaps) to put the bad guys away.

Anyway, I would like to ask you if you could solicit your network of friends and colleagues for any information that can be shared on Criminal SIGINT Monitoring. I've picked up rumors of U.S. Military trained personnel going to work for the Drug Cartels providing SIGINT against law enforcement operations. I've heard traffic analysis against secure networks has been provided to local drug organizations. As for the Russians it only makes sense to me that they would use SIGINT monitoring to further their goals. They certainly have enough highly trained personnel to draw upon.

Any information gained will be used to update the briefings I'm providing to various federal law enforcement agencies.

Thanks, keep up the good work!

"Bob"



Tim

I thought this article might be of interest to you, Jim Humphrey:

March 29 1998EUROPE

On the offensive: Russian gangs are spreading, linking with mafia dons such as John Gotti
Photograph: Colin Davey

Crime kings meet to carve up Europe
by Andrew Alderson and Carey Scott, Paris

Dividing Europe's spoils of crime

IN the ancient French town of Beaune, the strange mix of nationalities and expensive limousines escaped the notice of most residents, who were more interested in the price of wine at a nearby auction.

Only now has the reason for an autumn gathering of Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Colombian "businessmen" at a hotel in the heart of Burgundy become apparent. According to newly disclosed French intelligence reports, representatives of the world's leading organised crime syndicates were holding a summit to discuss carving up western Europe for drugs, prostitution, smuggling and extortion rackets.

Immaculately dressed gangsters from a dozen of the world's most ruthless crime rings met to consider greater co-operation, a pooling of expertise and, most importantly, to welcome their Russian "brothers" to the elite "club" responsible for a worldwide industry estimated to be worth £500 billion a year.

Since the Beaune summit in November 1994, there have been two other gatherings of crime bosses on chartered yachts in the Mediterranean, according to senior intelligence sources in Europe and America.

The message from the summits is clear: international criminal gangs are more organised than ever, even down to dividing up territories in European cities. "They split the cities into suburbs," said Serge Sabourin, of Interpol, the global police intelligence body. "In rural areas they are divided by type of activity."

Police believe the gangs liaise to ensure they are not crowding individual drug routes, agree the amount of drugs that each can bring into countries to avoid flooding markets, share equipment such as boats and arms, and hire out specialists to each other, particularly in the growing "cyber-crime" industry.

The new French intelligence reports have come to light after a high-profile murder trial in France, which threw up links between one of the six victims, a Russian millionaire businessman, and the mafia.

The Beaune summit was the first time French intelligence was able to monitor the entry of senior Russian gangsters into the country. The Russian mafia is understood to have been represented by Vyacheslav Ivankov, known as "the Jap" because of his Far Eastern appearance. Two days later a Georgian film producer was gunned down in Paris after being branded a traitor by the organisation.

Ivankov, who is said by Russian police to have earned £200,000 a day, has subsequently been jailed for 10 years for extortion in the United States. But his Moscow-based group has continued to expand, particularly into northern Europe, specialising in prostitution and fraud.

According to European and American intelligence sources, the Russians have emerged as significant players on the western European stage in recent years. There are now more than 8,000 organised crime groups in Russia, with two-thirds of the country's economy said to be under their sway. Two hundred of them have criminal ties in 50 countries.

Russian mobsters control massive extortion, fraud and prostitution rackets in Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium and are beginning to get a foothold in Britain. In Italy, their influence in some parts of the country is already greater than that of the Italian mafia, according to police.

At the Beaune summit, the Italian mafia was represented by the Gambino clan >from New York, whose boss is John Gotti, currently serving a life sentence for murder and racketeering. He is said to be so powerful that he still runs his empire from prison in America. Police say the Gambino clan, which has its roots in Italy and numbers about 500 people, has concentrated on southern Europe, specialising in arms, narcotics, gambling and loan-sharking.

Alongside them were representatives from at least three other groups. They included:

ïThe Sun Yee On triad from Hong Hong, which is reputed to have more than 30,000 members worldwide. The group is prominent in Britain, Holland, Belgium and France. It is involved in loan-sharking, prostitution, money-laundering, smuggling illegal immigrants and counterfeit currency.

ïThe Yakuza from Japan. Police believe there are about 100,000 mainly white-collar members, who tend to stay out of legitimate business and run prostitution, debt-collection and big-business rackets. They have strong ties with extreme right-wing groups.

ïThe Colombian cocaine cartel from Medellin. It was formerly led by Pablo Escobar, the infamous drug baron killed during a shoot-out with police. Today the cartel is more fragmented and has been overtaken by a Colombian rival, the Cali cartel, led by Orlando Sanchez.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, director of the global organised crime project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, said: "We know organised crime groups have met to carve up the planet . . . There has been an astonishing growth in transnational groups. The legal economy has gone global and the crime economy has gone global as well."

The London-based National Criminal Intelligence Service is particularly concerned by the growth of Turkish drug traffickers in Britain. This weekend Huseyin Baybasin, 41, a Turk, was arrested in Holland during a massive anti-drug smuggling swoop in Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Germany and Romania. Five people were also arrested in London, three of whom were charged yesterday with various offences.

Additional reporting: Michael Sheridan, Hong Kong and Mark Franchetti, Moscow

Dividing Europe's spoils of crime

TURKISH GANGSTERS are responsible for 80% of the heroin smuggled into Britain each year. They also specialise in money laundering throughout western Europe

THE GAMBINOS and other American-based mafia groups have forged strong links in Italy and concentrate their activities in southern Europe. They are responsible for arms smuggling, illegal gambling and loan shark ventures

TRIAD GROUPS from Hong Kong are responsible for prostitution operations in Holland and Belgium. At their most vicious, they imprison young girls as sex slaves

COLOMBIAN CARTELS, particularly the Cali and those from Medellin, flood Italy, Germany and other western European countries with hundreds of tons of cocaine a year

RUSSIAN MAFIA GROUPS, the Organisatsya, emerged as big-time crime "players" at the 1994 Beaune summit. They have established extortion, fraud and prostitution rackets in Germany and Italy, and are spreading westwards


Any comments from the readers

Tim