Illicit Trades of Persons and Goods in the Mediterranean and Transnational Criminal Organizations

Abstract

The long history of the Mediterranean characterizes it as a space-movement, in which also people and goods are moved as object of illicit trades. The paper first points out the differences between the various criminal systems that are crossed by the related illegal routes and examines the degree of presence in them of transnational criminal groups and their respective main organisational forms. In particular, there is highlighted the emergence of organizations, that can be characterized as poly-criminal, because they operate in different illicit markets (for example, people and cigarettes). The multilevel regulatory responses to this relationship between illicit markets and criminal organizations are considered. To verify the degree of harmonization at European level, the focus is on the specific area of the trafficking in human beings in five European justice systems (Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, and Germany). Some concluding remarks are then dedicated to the issues of the possibility of formulating a general notion of illicit trades, marking the difference between its fundamental admissibility at a criminological level and the difficulties of its precise legal delimitation. The plurality of national regulations on the level of substantive law dedicated to the various illicit markets does not prevent some procedural instruments from being fungible for many of these areas (e.g. wiretapping or undercover infiltrators), and the problems connected with determining the competent jurisdiction are also common to the various illicit trades.