Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy - Softcover

Mois's Na-M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099484242 ISBN 13: 9780099484240

Publisher: Arrow Books, 2007

Synopsis

Any newspaper anywhere in the world, any day, carries news about illegal migrants, drug busts, smuggled weapons, laundered money, or counterfeit goods The intense media coverage devoted to the war on terrorism has helped to obscure the other new wars of globalisation. Illicit international trade pits governments against agile, well-financed networks of highly dedicated individuals. Religious zeal or political goals drive terrorists, but profit is no less a motivator for murder, mayhem, and global insecurity than religious fanaticism. "Illicit" is the first book to reveal the full scale of this dark underground. It uncovers the connections between illegal industries and shows how they join forces to breed new lines of business, feed off political instability, foster violence and enable terrorism. How do pirated movies or CD's find their way to illegal markets worldwide even before they are released? And how, in our free, modern world, have over 30 million women and children - in South East Asia alone - been trafficked in the past ten years?

About this title

Review:

Illicit activities are exploding worldwide. The onslaught of globalization has unleashed a tidal wave of bad stuff--everything from arms trafficking, human smuggling, and money laundering to music bootlegging. Here is the dark side of globalization: the mushrooming underground economy. Moisés Naím explores this murky world in his book Illicit. Naím is the editor of the relaunched magazine Foreign Policy and a former executive director of the World Bank and Minister of Trade and Industry of Venezuela. In Illicit, he unties the connections between the Colombian cocaine dealer, the New York banker steering money to offshore tax havens, the Albanian forcing women into prostitution, and the Chinese market stall-holder selling counterfeit DVDs.

Naím reports that legitimate global trade has doubled since 1990 from $5 to $10 trillion. Meanwhile, money laundering has gone up tenfold, exceeding $1 trillion a year. Smuggling and money laundering have always existed, but Naím shows how they have increased at a staggering pace in the wake of globalization, despite new government controls since 9/11. The main culprits are the collapse of the Iron Curtain and state deregulation. As the reach of organized crime has expanded, governments have failed to keep up. Naím illustrates the problems with stories about A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb who sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Libya; Walter C. Anderson, an American who was accused of hiding $450 million in offshore accounts to evade taxes; and Vladimir Montesinos, the Peruvian intelligence czar who is on trial for trafficking drugs and arms. The book, while a little dry, will be interesting to policy buffs and aspiring crooks alike. --Alex Roslin

About the Author:

For the last six years, Moises Naim has been editor and publisher of the influential journal Foreign Policy. Naim holds an MS and a PhD from MIT and was the minister of Trade and Industry in his native Venezuela, as well as an executive Director of the World Bank. Since 1989, he has been a forum fellow at the World Economic Forum and an advisor to its annual meeting in Davos. This is his first general trade book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0099484242
• ISBN 13: 9780099484240
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352