The criminal syndicate as para-state in the Balkans: is the ‘New War-Making Criminal Entity’ a reality?
The criminal syndicate as para-state in the Balkans: is the ‘New War-Making Criminal Entity’ a reality?

Summary/Abstract: In the Balkans, some new moments in defining organised crime appear to have been tested particularly directly in Serbia where, firstly, there has been a long public debate over a systematic ‘siphoning off’ of public funds to the accounts of private companies through the mass corruption of a former, post-communist government until 2001, and where subsequently organised criminal rings have been accused of having masterminded and executed the assassination of the late Serbian Prime Minister, Dr. Zoran Đinđić. The Balkans, and particularly Serbia, has been exposed to some of the most destructive consequences of the two novel aspects of organised crime. Correspondingly, the region can serve as a polygon, or testing ground, for the exploration of these conceptual issues. Finally, the crime control-related experiences gained in this testing process could be valuable tools to address the emergence of what has recently become known in the criminological discourse on organised crime as a ‘New War-Making Entity’. This paper explores the key features of organised crime against the background of the Serbian and, by extension, Balkan circumstances and draws conclusions as to how these experiences can be useful more globally.

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