Økonomisk Kriminalitet Nordiske Perspektiver - Scandinavian ...

the representatives and employees of the legitimate alcohol trade are inspiring
confidence in a way that is very difficult for the illegitimates to match.
Markets, gardens and farms are very stable economic activities, even over
generations, and not just for a year or so like the marihuana plantations. The
owners and the employees know both growing and electricity. Their activities are
well known in local society, and so they have to be – if they want to make a living.
The demand for stolen cars in Norway is tiny. Used car dealers have a mixed
reputation for overpricing old cars, but not for selling relatively new models that
belong to someone else. Companies that are selling new cars are linked to huge
international corporations. Some of them have an economic crime agenda of their
own, concerning service not least, but that’s another story as far as the Eastern
European car thieves are concerned.
Networks, markets and history
Michael Levy, like most other scholars in the field, is critical of organized crime as
a scientific term, although he sees it may have become so culturally and legally
embedded that it cannot be eliminated. “Like the psychiatrist `s Rorschach blot, its
attraction as well as its weakness is that one can read almost anything into it …”
(Levy 2002: 887.) Let` s make our “Rorschach” then, by discussing organised
crime as networks and illegitimate markets, in a historical perspective.
The network perspective:
The illegitimate import, distribution and sale of alcohol in Norway are fluid and
network based. Know how and contacts represent the stability. Projects and
alliances are almost ever changing compared to the legitimate alcohol business.
The semi criminal “brokers” belong to a certain milieu. They talk to each other
and make deals in a tempo that is stunning, but they are all on their own. No one
works for some one else – finance house style. The marihuana gardeners were
recruited from closed ethnic milieus, but the 50 plantations and the (at least 120)
gardeners did not belong to or work for a single boss or a pool of investors.
Clusters and independent projects seem to have been the design. The Eastern
Europeans each have a gang and ethnic network for themselves. Most of them
have not heard about each other, across ethnic and national lines. Their networks
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