Georgios Antonopoulos

The report Financing of Organised Crime: Human Trafficking in Focus contributes to a better understanding of the financial aspects of this infamous phenomenon. The analysis explores the sources and mechanisms of the financing of trafficking in human beings, settlement of payments, access to financing in critical moments, costs of business, and the management of profits. The report draws on the findings of nine in-depth country case studies in Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Based on the results of the analysis and the examination of the current practices with regards to financial investigations, the report also suggests recommendations for tackling this crime.

The report Financing of Organised Crime contributes to a better understanding of the financial aspects of organised crime. The analysis explores topics such as the sources and mechanisms for financing organised crime, settlement of payments, access to financing in critical moments, costs of business and the management of profits. Drawing on the results of the analysis, the report also suggests possible new approaches to tackling organised crime. The report has been produced with the joint efforts of the Center for the Study of Democracy, the University of Trento and Teesside University and in close collaboration with the State Agency National Security in Bulgaria, the State Police in Latvia and the French National Institute for Advanced Studies in Security and Justice.

This article aims to shed some light on the motivations for and methods of female steroid consumption apropos broader changes in female body image ideals. Moreover, the study attempts to explore the connections between the competitive logic of liberal-postmodern consumer capitalism, 'competitive femininity' and steroid use. There is a growing consensus that an increasing number of women are consuming steroids, yet this phenomenon remains relatively under-researched and as such not much is known about this particular group of users. Utilising a single in-depth case study, this paper offers some additional insight gleaned from an ethnographic interview with a female bodybuilder who uses steroids. Her narrative elucidates some of the risks, harms and motivations for steroid consumption alongside broader changes in female body image ideals. Among the central findings, this paper highlights that the female bodybuilder is not resisting cultural norms but rather hyper-conforming to them by over-identifying with a hyper-idealised form of what constitutes 'acceptable femininity'. We conclude that steroid consumption retains a strong connection to the desire for aesthetic appeal and that both short and long-term motivations for using steroids are grounded in the drive for conformity. This has pertinent clinical implications for health professionals, particularly in relation to the efficacy of attempts to reduce steroid consumption by warning users of the potential adverse health effects.

This report addresses this gap by investigating the role of the Internet and digital technologies in the processes of human smuggling and trafficking in the United Kingdom (UK). The research presented here consists in an extensive examination of how the Internet and digital technologies facilitates i. the (a) recruitment and (b) transportation/entry phases of people smuggling towards and/or into the UK, and; ii. the (a) recruitment (b) transportation and (c) exploitation phases of the trafficking process in the UK sex and labour markets. Our research relies primarily on a UK-based virtual ethnography to acquire primary data, conducted between November 2015 and February 2017. As a research method, virtual ethnography extends the ethnographic field and situated observation from the examination of face-to-face researcher-informant interactions. Furthermore, the research has involved an “off-line” component, namely, 16 semistructured interviews that took place with a variety of key actors in the UK, including non-governmental organisation representatives (NGOs), law enforcement agents (LEAs), smugglers, and experts on cybercrime and/or human trafficking and smuggling.

There are justified concerns but little empirical evidence about the implications of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the business of human smuggling. The knowledge base on the use of ICT in human smuggling has rarely gone beyond the rather generic observation that the Internet and mobile technologies are available to and are used by both smugglers and migrants, and there is a concrete knowledge gap regarding the extent and the mode in which the use of ICT is integrated in the process of smuggling. In this paper, which is part of a wider research effort concerned with the role of the Internet in human smuggling in the European Union, we interrogate the outlook and implications of the use of contemporary mobile technology and of social media in the organisation and conduct of human smuggling to the UK.

Hall, A. & Antonopoulos, GA. (forthcoming) ‘The (Online) Supply of Lifestyle Medicines: A Criminological Study’, in Van de Ven, K, Mulrooney, K. & McVeigh, J. (eds.) Human Enhancement Drugs. London: Routledge.

It is widely argued that the trade in illicit pharmaceutical drugs is a growing and underestimated criminological phenomenon, especially in the context of the ever-expanding market reach presented by the Internet. However, this extensive and ultimately life-threatening online market is under-researched by criminologists. Drawing on the results of an innovative interdisciplinary project exploring the online trade in illicit medicines, this chapter focuses on the supply of illicit lifestyle medicines – or enhancement drugs – in the United Kingdom. The aim is to offer an empirically-grounded social scientific analysis of the nature and dynamics of the trade. The discussion covers the online sites marketing and advertising illicit lifestyle drugs, the channels and networks of production and distribution, and the illicit suppliers and their social organisation. As the argument unfolds the analysis centres on the rise of the Internet as one factor working in conjunction with the non-digital in a dynamic way, along with a variety of interacting transnational structures and processes, to enable the supply of illicit lifestyle drugs in the UK.

It has been widely suggested that the global market in counterfeit, falsified and illegally traded medicines has expanded at a tremendous rate in recent years, offering lucrative opportunities for criminal entrepreneurs with little legal risk. However, with a few exceptions, there has been little criminological research conducted on the trade’s actors and organisation. Of the few studies that are available, most position the supply of these products in the context of ‘transnational organised crime’, often presupposing the overwhelming presence of large-scale, hierarchical structures in the trade. This article, based on two extensive research projects in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, offers an account of the illicit supply of medicines in two European jurisdictions. The research outlines the nature and dynamics of the trade including the roles played by each national context as nodes in the global supply chain. The focus then shifts to the modus operandi, actors, online trade and social organisation in both countries. In contradistinction to the ‘transnational organised crime’ narrative, the empirical data outlined in this paper demonstrates that actors and networks involved in the trade are highly flexible and complex structures that straddle the categories of licit and illicit, online and offline, and global and local. This suggests that operations supplying illicit medicines vary largely in terms of size, reach, organisation and legality.

This article aims at providing an account of the social organization of the cigarette counterfeiting business in the People's Republic of China—a business that has been feeding the cigarette black markets around the globe. Specifically, we aim to exhibit the scale and nature of ...

Page 1. TeesRep: Teesside University's Research Repository http://tees.openrepository. com/tees/ This full text version, available on TeesRep, is the PDF (final version) of: Antonopoulos, GA, Tierney, J. and Webster, C. (2008) 'Police perception of ...

This article examines the social organisation of cocaine smuggling in Greece. Emphasis is placed on the involvement of professionals from the shipping industry and actors from the ‘upper society echelons’ who play a pivotal role in the transportation and importation of cocaine to Western Europe and Greece. After considering empirical evidence from a variety of sources, our findings indicate that the cocaine market in Greece is ‘organised’ by a system of collaborative relationships between state, business and civil society actors. It is suggested that to better understand the nature of this illegal market, further research is required to take a closer look into the economic, socio-cultural and political incentives of these actors.

Over the last two decades official and media discourses have paid increasing attention to the proceeds of ‘organized crime’. However, although there is a relatively sound understanding of finance-related issues in the drug markets, not much is known about other illegal markets. Drawing on a diverse set of original empirical data, including interviews with active criminal entrepreneurs involved in the trade, this article provides an account of the financial management of the illicit tobacco business in the United Kingdom. The study has two main objectives. First, to increase knowledge on the financial management of ‘organized crime’ by using the illegal tobacco trade in the United Kingdom as a case study and second, to further knowledge of the trade’s social organization. The findings suggest a critical departure from the discourses on ‘organized crime’ and crime money.

"This study explores the history of the illegal production, distribution, and smuggling of cigarettes in mainland China. Data were obtained from a content analysis of 931 media reports retrieved from LexisNexis for the time period 1975 until 2010, and from other open sources. The illegal cigarette trade first emerged in the form of violations of state tobacco monopoly regulations. In the course of the restructuring of the legal tobacco sector, which occurred under external political pressure to open the Chinese market to foreign competition, an illegal cigarette industry emerged which at first primarily produced fake Chinese brand cigarettes for the domestic black market. At the same time, China became a destination country for smuggled genuine Western brand cigarettes. It was only after effective crackdowns against cigarette smuggling and domestic distribution channels in the late 1990s that the Chinese illegal cigarette industry shifted to exporting large numbers of counterfeit Western brand cigarettes to black markets abroad. China’s current role as a leading supplier of counterfeit cigarettes is a result of the contradictions of the economic reform process and of external licit and illicit forces that worked toward opening up the Chinese tobacco sector to the
outside world."

Although transnational trafficking in children has attracted worldwide attention in the last two decades, internal trafficking has been relatively ignored. A number of geographical contexts have been largely neglected by the academic community and one of them has been China; a country with a remarkably long history of the phenomenon and one in which the particular practice is culturally embedded, to the point that it is viewed simply as tradition.

ABSTRACT a Organised crime, whether or not in its Transnational manifestation, is usually depicted in huge threatening dimensions. However, despite this sometimes superhuman representation one should not forget that we are dealing with a human phenomenon and, therefore, should not lose sight of the corresponding human dimensions. This also concerns related phenomena such as money laundering and corruption that forces itself upon us when we look back over the past decades at the 'threat images' portrayed by the authorities as well as the media. What threat has come true since, say, 1970 or 1980? We still observe the same (criminal) 'business as usual', together with the alleged accumulation of huge amounts of crime-money. However, these threat images are mainly presented from an 'underworld gaze' directed at the criminal exploits of hoodlums and thugs, 'under' the 'civilised' society. Most often these criminals were viewed as coming from abroad. Meanwhile the criminal (underworld) markets have not faltered. Despite this continued 'threat', the industrialised world grew steadily richer and safer up until 2008. That is until the effects of enduring massive criminal manipulations in the financial upperworld brought this growing affluence to an inglorious end. Corruption is another threat to the fabric of society. Do the anti-corruption policies in countries at the rim of the EU achieve results? There are reasons to believe that most of the policy making effects consist of the façades in a 'Potemkin village': a paper world of ratified conventions, enacted laws and ineffective institutions. Most human and most deceptive. In this eleventh volume of the Cross-border Crime Colloquium series, twenty six European experts present their latest or on-going studies and research findings. The seventeen chapters cover a range of subjects which are of lasting interest for researchers as well as policy-makers: organised crime, criminal finances, money laundering and corruption. They make us aware of the human dimension in misdeeds as well as the related policy making.

Governing through globalised crime is a book we read with great interest and found to be clearly thought provoking. The author, Mark Findlay, who is professor of criminal justice at the University of Sydney, extends here his previous work to lay down not merely a theoretically rich ...

Papanicolaou, G. and Antonopoulos, GA (2009) 'Governing through globalised crime: future for international criminal justice', Crime Law and Social Change, 52 (4), pp.429-432. ... There are no files associated with this item. ... Del.icio.us LinkedIn Citeulike Connotea ...

This brief offers a unique and innovative account of the role of internet and digital technologies in human smuggling and trafficking. It explores new illegal paths through the web by analyzing how traffickers and smugglers use the visible and dark web during different phases of the process, including recruitment, transportation, and exploitation. Featuring case studies from two European countries, Italy and the United Kingdom, it outlines the types of websites used in these processes, how they are used, and common behavior patterns. With a view of transnational criminal activities involving actors from individual criminal entrepreneurs to organized crime groups and fluid large criminal networks, this brief will be of use to law enforcement, researchers of trafficking and organized crime, and policy makers.

The trade in counterfeit goods is growing and is increasingly linked to transnational organised crime. But little is known about the financial mechanisms that lie behind this trade. This is the first account of the financial management of the counterfeiting business. Written by experts in a wide range of fields, it examines the financial and business structures in relation to the illicit trade in counterfeit products. Based on interviews with active criminal entrepreneurs in the UK and abroad and other data, the authors explore ‘organised crime’ and mutating criminal markets, digital technologies and their criminological and sociological implications, and cultural values and practices. This book will make a significant contribution to our understanding of these timely issues.