No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Vietnamese Criminal Activities in the Czech Republic
Abstract
The chapter describes the main criminal activities and their modi operandi within the Vietnamese diaspora in the Czech Republic (CR). These activities have national and international dimensions in the CR. The chapter describes criminal activities such as economic crime, smuggling of people, trade in people and prostitution or violent crime, counterfeiting activities and stealing goods. Usury and trade in arms are also briefly mentioned. Special attention is paid to crimes that have been growing in importance relatively recently—to drug crimes and to the illicit wildlife trade. The chapter demonstrates that the nature of the diaspora gives prominence to economic criminal activities. Certain other forms of crime exist, but are fairly marginal in comparison with the more significant ones. The only two exceptions are drug-related crimes.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
In the first decades of the 21st century, Vietnamese drug-related crime grew tremendously in Central Europe. From the middle of 2007, the Czech security forces have been registering a growing engagement of the Vietnamese in the illegal production of cannabis. The rise in their engagement can be largely attributed to hydrophonic techniques imported from the Netherlands. Most of the cannabis in the CR is grown for the domestic market. However, perpetrators also engage in trafficking cannabis abroad in high-volume, especially to the neighbouring countries, but also to Ukraine, Hungary, the Great Britain and the Nordic countries.
From 2010, it has been mainly Vietnamese organized crime that dominate the production of methamphetamine in the CR and its exports from the CR to other countries such as the Slovak Republic, Poland, Germany, Norway, and even Australia. In some related cases hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine were traded.
The illegal activities of the Vietnamese groups are highly conspiratorial and organized. Vietnamese criminal networks use a kind of ‘division of labour’ between different groups. There are groups which do not run their own large capacity grow houses and methamphetamine labs but only trade in cannabis and methamphetamine. They have contacts with other Vietnamese criminal groups operating abroad and use complex drug courier networks.
The National Drug Headquarters of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service of the Police of the Czech Republic (NDH) is an elite police body authorized to carry out the combat against serious crime linked with unlawful production of drugs, their possession and their spreading. Since its foundation in 1991, it has been monitoring and analyzing the development of the Czech drug scene, and it has been intervening against drug crime efficiently based on the obtained knowledge. It is significant that the NDH fulfils tasks not only in the field of law enforcement, but also in the field of police education and prevention. The historical development and working of the NDH can be understood only in the context of the social and legal situation of the relevant period of time. That is why this book is dedicated, in its particular chapters, to the description of the situation on the drug scene, as the drug police had to give a response to it in the given period of time, and also to the description of the legal and administrative framework in which the NDH was and is still operating. The analyses of the drug scene are based on knowledge obtained by the NDH and they are completed by the case reports of important criminal cases. In the beginning, the book deals with the birth of the drug scene in Czech lands and with the historical roots of the Czech drug law enforcement. It refers back to the times of the AustriaHungarian Monarchy and the prewar Czechoslovak Republic. Till the disintegration of AustriaHungarian Empire the drug abuse in Czech lands was not considered an important social threat. However, the end of World War I brought an increase of morphinism. The abuse of hydrocodone, codeine, pantopone and marihuana appeared later. But cocaine was the substance which caused a really massive growth of the number of drug addicts and the appearance of new forms of drug abuse in Czechoslovakia. The number of cocaine addicts only in Prague was estimated to be up to 10000 persons by police sources from the thirties. The increasing demand led to the development of an extended illegal cocaine market soon afterwards. In 1937, police records indicated 1420 persons who were actively involved in drug dealing at the time or in the previous years. Only the capital of Prague registered 528 active drug dealers in the same year. The drug legislation was insufficient and the penalties were very low. During the twenties and especially during the thirties, Czechoslovakia became an important outlet and transit area of drugs from abroad due to its central geographical position in Europe and it also became a sphere of activity of international drug traffickers and drug trafficking organizations. The expansion of illegal drug trafficking and also obligations arising from international conventions led to the foundation of the “Headquarters for Combat with Illegal Narcotic Trafficking in the Czechoslovak Republic” in the framework of the Police Directorate in Prague by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1928. However, the efficiency of the activities of the Headquarters was restricted by legislative insufficiencies and unsatisfactory human resources and material equipment for lots of years. That was why the Headquarters appeared to be rather a registration body than an executive law enforcement unit. After World War II the communists came to power in Czechoslovakia. The country was closed towards the West and the emerging drug scene there had already completely different character than those in western countries. Drugs from foreign countries played only a marginal role on the Czechoslovak drug scene. Their importation was minimized due to a strong control of movements of goods and persons across the border from the West. Nevertheless, the abuse of medicaments with psychoactive effects and snuffing of volatile substances increased to an important extent. The production and the abuse of “brown” and pervitine emerged. The main component of brown (its name was derived from its typical brown color) was hydrocodone, which could be obtained from commonly available medicaments (analgesics, antitussives, etc.) containing codeine. Pervitine (methamphetamine), also known as “piko” or “petchko”, was manufactured from ephedrine. The source of it was formed, e.g., by different medical preparations containing ephedrine, which was commonly prescribed against ordinary respiratory illnesses. Ephedrine obtained directly from industrial production was also used for this purpose. The abuse of brown and pervitine was mainly the problem of closed drugaddict´s communities. The existing legislation enabled the possession of drugs for one’s own use and it also allowed drug addicts to use them with impunity. They got into conflicts with the law only at those moments when they started to threaten their neighborhoods. It was also difficult to distinguish between drug dealing and possession of drugs for the drug addicts’ own use within the process of investigation. The law enforcement authorities were coping with problems of qualification of acts of nonalcoholic drug addicts and other persons for criminal offences according to the relevant articles 187 and 188 of the Penal Code in their everyday practice for lots of years. The work in revealing, clarifying, and prevention of drug crime was concentrated in executive units at the level of district administrations of the Corps of National Security and specifically in the hands of agents of the criminal service of the Public Security Service (Veřejná bezpečnost; VB) dealing with general crime – agents, senior inspectors from the ranks of uniformed police and investigators of the VB. After the social changes in 1989, the volume, organized character and international extent of illegal trafficking grew. The Czech Republic started to be exploited as a drug transit territory. The undeveloped drug market there offered a new “commercial space” for activities of drug dealers in the Czech Republic. The period of relatively closed communities of drug addicts manufacturing and distributing their products in the circle of consumers they knew, finished with the year 1989. The communities were opened up step by step and the “Cooks” started to work on a commercial basis while taking orders from drug addicts and dealers both inland and abroad. The Czech territory was dramatically penetrated by criminal drug groups from Balkans, especially from former Yugoslavia, but also from Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Turkey. Subsequently, criminal drug groups from Latin America, Arabian countries, SubSaharan Africa, China, Vietnam and former Soviet Union countries began to operate in the Czech Republic. These groups were organized at the international level and they were characterized by high level of professionalism and a great range of experience gained during lots of years of practice in different countries in the world. Criminal offences committed by such groups were typically characterized by numerous specific features emerging from different cultures and psychologies of the perpetrators. The spectrum of abused illegal drugs included not only the drugs of inland provenance but also practically all internationally known drugs on the Czech illegal market. The drugs were available virtually without any problems on the entire territory of the Czech Republic. The most important and the most serious trend remains still demand for pervitine (methamphetamine). Relatively low sentences were imposed for drug offences in the Czech Republic. Especially in the middle of nineties, a very insufficient legislation existed here from the point of view of sentences and also from the point of view of legal use of confidential sources and special techniques against proliferation of drug offences. It was only in 1998 that an amendment of the Penal Code introduced criminalization of possession of drugs for the perpetrator’s own use “in an amount bigger than a small one”. The procedures of evidence and trials were lengthy and complicated. Law enforcement agencies and courts were just gaining experience in combat with organized drug crime step by step. This situation required new operational approaches from the side of the police. The requirement of having a central drug unit which could execute the combat against drug crime at national level appeared. The Drug Brigade Prague was formed in 1991 and shortly after it the Drug Brigade of the Federal Police Corps appeared as well. The Drug Section of the Criminal Police Headquarters was established in 1992. The National Drug Headquarters of the Organized Crime Revealing Unit of the Criminal Police Service appeared in 1994. Finally, in 2001, the independent National Drug Headquarters of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service was founded. The achieved results show the range and efficiency of the work of the national drug squad. 1673 antidrug operations (a respectable number) were carried out, 3961 perpetrators were arrested, and 18 327 kilograms of drugs were seized by the members of the squad directly in the Czech Republic. Besides this, they were participating in hundreds of international operations involving drug seizures and arrests of perpetrators outside of the territory of the Czech Republic. The following operations belong to the most important ones conducted by the NDH: Operation Powder (“Pudr”, 1995), which dismantled the CzechDutch criminal group and an illegal largescale Ecstasy factory in Central Bohemia; Operation Andromeda (19931997), which focused on a CzechAlbanian gang of heroin traffickers; Operation Alligator (1997), which targeted Colombian cocaine smugglers operating through the Czech territory; Operation Cage (“Klec”, 1999), which led to the arrest of an important KosovoAlbanian drug boss named Princ Dobroshi; Operation Iridium (2000), which focused on the members of an Italian mafiatype organization called Camorra, which was smuggling heroin through the territory of the Czech Republic; Operation Phoenix (“Fenix”, 20092012), which aimed to uncover of the international organized group of persons involved in cocaine smuggling and distribution on the territory of the Czech Republic and other countries; Operations Canh (2010) and Sugar Factory (“Cukrovar”, 20122014), which affected Vietnamese high volume indoor cultivators of cannabis and marihuana middlemen; Operations Bat (2015), which was focused on Vietnamese methamphetamine manufacturers and traffickers; Operation Marabu (2015), which had the aim of combating Nigerian drug traffickers; Operations Roid (2012), Roid II (2013), and Cash On Delivery (“Dobírka,” 2014), which dealt with organized groups involved in illegal trafficking in substances with anabolic or hormonal effects; Operation Sake (2015), which targeted an international organized group of criminals recruiting Czechs and Slovaks as air couriers for transportation of methamphetamine from Turkey and Armenia to Japan; and operation Traject (2016) against producers and exporters of amphetamine. The NDH cooperates with different sections of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic and other governmental departments, as well as with foreign partners within the scope of its activity. This cooperation has been conducted since the foundation of the NDH at both bilateral and multilateral levels. In the framework of inland cooperation, some of the important partners of the NDH are, e.g., the Customs Drug Unit of the General Directorate of Customs, the Organized Crime Revealing Unit of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service, the Institute of Criminalistics Prague, the Rapid Reaction Unit, the Police Air Service, the Special Technical Unit of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service, the Undercover Operations Unit of the Criminal Police and Investigation Service, the Immigration Police Service, and the Security Information Service. The NDH is a respectable partner of law enforcement agencies of many countries in the world in the field of international cooperation in the area of law enforcement. The cooperation among the NDH and the agencies is carried out at several basic levels: the level of communication via Interpol, Europol, Eurojust, and Sirene; activities in international working groups (SouthEast, STAR, Crystal, the PHARE Police Officer Exchange, Viking, WAND, EMPACT, Chopin); bilateral cooperation with foreign police agencies, which currently includes the police agencies of dozens of countries in Europe, America and Asia; and participation in international conferences and projects and their organization (e.g. HONLEA, the twinning project in Serbia, Interpol conferences). Besides the circle of basic police work, the NDH participates in the formulation of the drug policy of the Czech Republic and it fulfils its tasks in the field of methodology, coordination and prevention of the fight against drug crime. It is also involved in forensic research, mainly in the framework of the Project Relief, which is focused on the development and promotion of the method based on examination of tool marks made by pressing instruments on the surface of pressed drug deliveries and also on the development of database linked with this method. The agents of the NDH participated in international peace keeping missions repeatedly. In the framework of the mission of EULEX in Kosovo, they were included in positions in units with similar orientation as the NDH like, e.g., the Directorate for Drug Trafficking Investigation (DDTI) and the Organized Crime Investigation Unit (OCIU). Furthermore, in the framework of the peace keeping operation EUPOL in Afghanistan, the activity of policemen from the NDH, who took part in, consisted mainly in training and education, consulting, professional management, and mediation of the material aid provided to local law enforcement agencies.
A large number of anti-poaching, conservation and management measures have been implemented to protect rhinos. None of these responses has achieved tangible results in lowering unnatural rhino deaths through illegal hunting in southern Africa. The international donor community, conservation NGOs and governments have disbursed millions of dollars to fight this illegal wildlife trade, and continue to do so. We argue in this report that
these measures are bound to fail, as they do not engage with the most important change agents in conservation: local people who live in or near protected areas and game reserves. The report therefore aims to provide a better understanding of why African rural communities participate in wildlife economies, both legal and illegal, and how
alternative, community-oriented strategies can help build a more resilient response to organized wildlife crime than has hitherto been achieved.
Since 1975, the numbers of Vietnamese living in Europe have steadily increased. As new emigrants appeared in various countries, new types of crime came with them. Also in the Czech Republic, where a relatively large Vietnamese diaspora has been in existence since communist times, numerous Vietnamese criminal networks were established. The Vietnamese networks have a specific structure and modus operandi. Their bosses create parallel power structures within the Vietnamese diaspora and frequently merge together legal and illegal activities. The Vietnamese criminal networks are engaged in a broad spectrum of criminal activities, including economic crime, people smuggling and trafficking in drugs.
This article addresses the nature and development of the Vietnamese involvement in cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands. The findings are based on empirical data collected from national police registrations, case studies and in-depth interviews with over 30 Dutch and international respondents. The authors describe the background characteristics of Vietnamese cannabis farmers, the structure of the predominantly mono-ethnic Vietnamese criminal groups and the international context. A situational approach to organised crime is applied to illustrate the ‘emergent’ character of the Vietnamese crime groups as opposed to a ‘strategic’ context of organised crime. The Vietnamese supervisors in the Netherlands have legal citizenship and often have ‘careers’ in cannabis-related crimes. It would appear that for a Vietnamese gardener or farmer, the path into cannabis cultivation is linked to financial debt. Besides situational factors, group characteristics, such as the migrant community, seem important in understanding the Vietnamese involvement in the Dutch cannabis market.
An area in which global regulatory regimes play an increasingly prominent role is the effort to protect environment. The unsustainable wildlife trade (WT) belongs among the major threats to these efforts. In this chapter, the development and current state of the WT regulatory regime, and especially CITES as its fundamental provision, are analysed. In the first part, the structure and functional mechanisms of the WT regulatory regime are described and its basic weaknesses identified. In the second part, the current dynamics of the WT regulatory regime and its triangular interactions with national restrictive regimes and international wildlife markets are discussed through the means of a case study on the trade in rhino horns. The rhino case demonstrates that, as a system of wildlife trade control, CITES fails to accurately monitor supply, particularly where trade is illegal, it fails to consider the impact of trade controls in realistic terms, and it does little to consider the complex nature of demand or contend with changing market dynamics. To more effectively manage the WT, the reforms are needed within CITES and in the sphere of interaction between CITES and local WT regulatory regimes.
This article explores the growth of organised crime within the Vietnamese community with particular reference to the cultivation of cannabis, money laundering and the smuggling or trafficking of children. The article begins by exploring the history and diversity of the ‘Vietnamese community’ in the United Kingdom and the role of Vietnamese culture in shaping their criminal enterprises. It then draws on research involving two sets of qualitative data: one set is based on 45 interviews with law enforcement personnel based in Vietnam and the United Kingdom as well as with key stakeholders in the Vietnamese community; the other set is based on structured questionnaires issued to 34 Vietnamese residents in Britain, 24 of whom are here illegally. It examines the relationship between illegal immigration of Vietnamese citizens to Britain and the urban cultivation of cannabis, in what has become known as ‘cannabis factories’, and the laundering of the profits abroad to Vietnam. After exposing the logistics of Vietnamese illegal immigration into Britain, the article concludes that those involved in cannabis cultivation, money laundering and people smuggling are primarily motivated by profit rather than ‘lifestyle’ concerns, and operate within what theorists of organised crime refer to as the ‘mono-ethnic criminal network’.
Vay online dễ dàng, tiẹn lợi ở mọi lúc mọi cùng BaGang [Online Easy Loans, Convenient at Any Time and Place with BaGang
- Bagang
African and Asian Rhinoceroses-Status, Conservation and Trade. CoP17 Doc. 68. A Report from the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) African and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups and TRAFFIC to the CITES Secretariat pursuant to Resolution Conf. 9.14. (Rev. CoP16)
- R H Emslie
- T Milliken
- B Taludkar
- S Ellis
- K Adcock
- M H Knight
Padělky zamořují český obchod, netýkají se jen tržnic [Fakes Overrun Czech Trade, They Are not Only at Marketplaces
- D Dostál
African Rhino. Gland and Cambridge: International Union for Conservation of Nature
- R Emslie
- M Brooks
New Alternative Lending and Micro Lending Players in Vietnam. Fintechnews Singapore
- Fintechnews Vietnam
Eu Tiger Trade. The Ruthless Business of Tiger Traders in
- Four Paws
Gruesome Discovery of Czech Tiger Farm Exposes Illegal Trade in Heart of Europe. Guardian
- Guardian
Tisková zpráva k operaci “Cukrovar” [Press Report for Operation ‘Cukrovar
- B Kudláčková
Tisková zpráva k operaci “Canh” [Press Report for Operation ‘Canh
- J Frydrych
Protože jsou prostě velmi levné [The Czech People like Chinese e-shops. Because they are simply very cheap
- P Jůzlová
Zpráva o situaci v oblasti vnitřní bezpečnosti a veřejného pořádku na území České republiky v roce 2017 (ve srovnání s rokem 2016)
- Mi-Zpráva
Cigarety s nechutným tabákem a alkohol s usazeninami. Jak poznat padělky [Cigarettes with Bad Tobacco and Alcohol with Sedimentation. How to Recognize Fakes
- Novinky
Czech Court Sentences 3 Men for Trading in Tiger Products
- Ap News
Joint press release of the Czech Customs and the Czech Environmental Inspectorate. Inspectors Detected Traders in Ivory and Tiger Products in the Course of the Operations KOSTKA, TYGŘÍ OKO and EBUR). Prague, 30 May
- Mf-Gdc-Press
While Conducting the TROPHY Operation (TROFI) Customs Officers and Officials of the CEI Have Uncovered Illegal Trade in Tigers. Prague
- Mf-Gdc-Press
How to Stop Poaching and Protect Endangered Species? Forget the ‘Kingpins’. The New York Times
- R Nuwer
Wildlife Crime in Poland
- K Paquel
Výroční zpráva 2012 [National Drug Headquarters
- Pcr-Ndh Zpráva
Tipping Point: Transnational Organised Crime and the ‘War’ on Poaching
- J Rademeyer
Trafficking in Protected Species
- Unodc
African Wildlife Foundation. Rhino Horn Demand 2012-2014
- Wildaid
National Drug Headquarters
- Pcr-Ndh Report
Národní protidrogová centrála. Výroční zpráva
- Pcr-Ndh Zpráva
Elephants. Stolen Wildlife
- Stolen Wildlife
Češi si oblíbili čínské e-shopy. Protože jsou prostě velmi levné [The Czech People like Chinese e-shops
- P Jůzlová
The Role of Vietnamese Criminal Networks in Drug Crime: The Czech Republic Case
- M Nožina
- PC van Duyne
- T Strémy
- JH Harvey
- GA Antonopoulos
- K von Lampe