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IntroductionI. United Nations efforts to strengthen international cooperationagainst organized crime: the early yearsThe United Nations, because of its wide-ranging mandate and international constituency,has always provided the most appropriate forum for promoting a common understandingof and global action to combat transnational organized crime. Thus, the work and initiativesof the Organization in strengthening international cooperation against organized crimedate back 30 years. The issue has been discussed and assessed at several of the quinquennialUnited Nations congresses on crime prevention and criminal justice. That continuingdebate—and its results—reflects the changing perceptions and comprehension of the threatsposed by organized crime over several decades; it can also be viewed as a sustained coursein the direction of raising awareness among policymakers and decision makers about theproblem and the most effective ways to tackle it.The first United Nations forum where issues related to organized crime were examinedand discussed was the Fifth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime andthe Treatment of Offenders, held in Geneva from 1 to 12 September 1975. 1 Under an agendaitem entitled “Changes in forms and dimensions of criminality—transnational andnational”, the Fifth Congress focused on crime as business at the national and transnationallevels, paying particular attention to organized crime, white-collar crime and corruption.It was agreed that the economic and social consequences of “crime as business” were typicallymuch greater than the consequences of traditional forms of interpersonal violenceand crime against property, thus posing a more serious threat to society and nationaleconomies. In addition, while white-collar crime, organized crime and corruption were aserious problem in many developed countries, the national welfare and economic developmentof the entire society in developing countries were found to be drastically affected bysuch criminal conduct as bribery, price-fixing, smuggling and currency offences. 2Recognizing that those types of crime had been relatively neglected by criminologistsand that the definitions used were often vague and ambiguous, the Fifth Congress indicatedthat the expression “crime as business” referred to heterogeneous groups of crimes characterizedby specific features, such as the underlying objective of economic gain and the involvementof some form of commerce, industry or trade; the involvement of some form oforganization in the sense of a set or system of relatively formal arrangements between thevarious parties committing the illegal acts; the use or misuse of legitimate techniques of businessand industry; and the high social status and/or political power of the persons involvedin committing the crimes concerned. 3 Organized crime, in particular, was understood to be1With regard to organized crime as a standing agenda item of the United Nations congresses in recent years, see M.Cherif Bassiouni and Eduardo Vetere, eds., Organized Crime: a Compilation of U.N. Documents, 1975-1998, (Ardsley, NewYork, Transnational Publishers, 1998), introduction, pp. xvii et seq.; see also the report of the Secretary-General of theEleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, entitled “Fifty years of United Nations congresseson crime prevention and criminal justice: past accomplishments and future prospects” (A/CONF.203/15).2See Fifth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Geneva, 1-12September 1975: report prepared by the Secretariat (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.76.IV.2 and corrigendum),chap. II, para. 51.3Ibid., para. 52.ix