Extortion

Una fuente de inteligencia que participa directamente en las indagaciones reveló que los primeros indicios establecen que existe un alto porcentaje de participación de policías en esta red de criminalidad organizada.
Este hecho cobra relevancia luego que la Agencia Técnica de Investigación Criminal (Atic) estableció la participación del excomisario álvaro Ernesto García, exjefe de la Unidad de Pandillas de la desaparecida Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal (DNIC), en la estructura de la mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) dedicada al cobro de la extorsión, sicariato y otros delitos.

En este documento se hizo un análisis de contexto y un diagnóstico del comportamiento de la extorsión en el departamento del Meta para el año 2013.
Este documento incluye un panorama general del conflicto armado, la revisión de indicadores de violencia que incluyen los delitos de secuestro y extorsión, utilizando fuentes oficiales y no oficiales.
Para el abordaje y caracterización del delito de extorsión, se incluyen dos enfoques: el análisis de las fuentes y datos oficiales; y el análisis de una encuesta de percepción y victimización que visibiliza el impacto del delito más allá de la realidad estadística.

Por favor pedir copia del documento directamente a la Fundación País Libre.

¿Cuál es la tasa de no denuncia del delito de extorsión? ¿Todos los extorsionados pagan lo que les piden? ¿Cuál es la expectativa de las víctimas de extorsión de ser re-victimizados?  Estas preguntas responde el documento a partir del análisis de la Encuesta Municipal de Victimización y Percepción de la Violencia –EVIPES- 2013.

Este delito ha crecido tanto en Honduras que se calcula que solo las
pandillas reciben más de $54 millones (más de L1,200 millones) cada año por “impuesto de guerra”; esto sin contar otras organizaciones criminales que también cobran extorsión a los hondureños.
Las críticas cifras en Honduras solo son superadas por las de El Salvador, el país que más dinero paga por extorsiones en Centroamérica.
Se valora que solo los transportistas se ven obligados a dar más de $34
millones de dólares al año a grupos criminales que les exigen “renta”.

From the Niger River and across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria, military checkpoints are an unmistakable presence, albeit a complex hub  of corruption. On a daily, soldiers extort money from commuters, especially long journey truck drivers as they deliver goods and produce across Nigeria. This study examines this corrupt phenomenon of soldiers' extortion of long journey truck drivers at military security checkpoints on
Nigerian highways. It uses fifteen one-on-one qualitative interviews with truck owners and truck drivers who ply different highways across Nigeria. The study finds that the drivers are subjected to predatory and forceful extortion by soldiers, an act which reached an extreme high during the restriction of interstate travels to curb the spread of COVID-19. However, although drivers subjected to this corrupt act loathe to offer money to soldiers, the soldiers abuse their power by coercing them to oblige. This study examines the implication this has for the entrepreneurs and for the military profession, given that extortion has become a norm at checkpoints.

Análisis multidisciplinario del fenómeno de las extorsiones iniciando con un análisis estadístico de denuncias, casos ingresados al sistema judicial, situación del delito en algunos países de latinoamérica y respuestas institucionales y legales del Estado para combatir el fenómeno. Todo analizado bajo un marco conceptual criminológico de la tipología de este delito en particular y su impacto en la sociedad tanto a nivel económico como psicológico y sociológico.

Central American gangs are responsible for brutal acts of violence, abuse of women and forced displacement of thousands. Governments must go beyond punitive measures and address the social and economic roots of gang culture, tackle extortion schemes and invest in communities.

*Please note this is not a report authored by myself, but a collaborative paper by many individuals from the International Crisis Group.

Research Risks of Internet communication IV is the fourth nationwide
research.
It was implemented within the E-Bezpeci project, which has been guaranteed
since 2010 by professional department –Centre for the Prevention of risky
virtual communication, Palacky University Olomouc, and its interest was in
the occurrence of risky behaviours associated with information and
communication technologies (especially the Internet) in a population of
Czech children.
Specifically these risky phenomenons were monitored:
A. Cyberbullying (various forms of cyberbullying, depending on the chosen
communication environments).
B. Establishing virtual contacts (communication with unknown people and
personal meetings with them; basis for the cybergrooming).
C. Sexting (in the form of public sharing of intimate materials the internet
and in the form of providing intimate material on request).
D. Sharing of personal data on the Internet (focused on sharing face
photos).
E. Other related phenomena.
Their definitions are given in the basic theoretical background of the
monograph (chapter 1). Description of the research methodology including
presentation of the descriptive part we present in the second and third chapter
of the text. Relational part of the research has been published in professional
periodicals; therefore, it is not mentioned here.
7
Possibilities of prevention of risky behaviour on the Internet are outlined in
the fourth chapter. The bibliography and the sources, by which the readers of
this monograph can increase awareness about issues examined, are to be
found in the fifth chapter.

Over the past year, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin American Program has undertaken an extensive review of the principal United States security assistance program for the region—the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). This review has focused on the major security challenges in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and how CARSI seeks to address these. This publication includes country reports on each country including a review of the current in-country security context, as well as assessing CARSI’s effectiveness for addressing these challenges. The report also includes a chapter providing an in-depth analysis of the geographic distribution of homicides and an examination of how such an analysis can help policy makers design more effective targeted strategies to lower violence. A final chapter outlining policy options for the future completes the report.

The Mungiki

First, they came in the name of god,
and they got legitimacy,
Then they came in the name of politics,
and they money, riches,
Then they got greedy,
they maimed, shot, murdered, extorted and beheaded,
Then they were besieged,
arrested, killed, extrajudicial executions
Then they changed religion,
It did not work
Then they changed names,
It did not work,
Then they went back to politics,
Ethnic politics,
And it seems to be working,
they are becoming legitimate again!

Ransomware is a type of malware that aims to prevent the
victim from accessing computer systems and/or data through
encryption and then require a ransom to be decrypted and to
recover access to the data. Ransomware can be considered as a
type of malware and as a criminal activity.
Portuguese Law does not have a specific incrimination of
Ransomware, so we must try to subsume the conduct to any
crime provided by Law.
In this article we will try to determine which crimes are
committed by criminals in connection with this criminal activity.

This paper, which is based upon the author’s experiences in Aceh from 2006 to 2010, illustrates the dangers inherent in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) policies that allow for the transfer of reintegration assets through ex-insurgent command structures. The manipulation of such transfers in Aceh, Indonesia, led to the creation of a new insurgent group, the Pasukan Peudeung, from the ‘splintering’ corpus of the Free Aceh Movement. The author argues that Aceh’s DDR process, while widely heralded as a success, was inherently flawed in its execution and contained within it numerous discrete, and violent, failures; the emergence of the Pasukan Peudeung was emblematic of this. GAM’s conflict-era economic activities, encompassing illegal forms of extraction and other rent-seeking behaviours, did not end with the conflict: they simply evolved, as did Pasukan Peudeung. Further, GAM was and remains in its current iterations a criminal network; its members constantly reinterpret their ideologies to suit their actions and interests, usually in reaction to crimes committed by members.

"Maras, or street gangs, have becoming the scourge of El Salvador, particularly in the capital. They sell drugs, extort money and rape girls, often in extremely cruel ways. They systematically resort to violence to get what they want, being responsible for about a third of the country's homicides. In this special article for LAB, Sonja Wolf looks at the role played by the maras in the life of the country."

Este documento tenía por objetivo analizar la verdadera dimensión de la extorsión en el Magdalena Medio para el año 2012, más allá de los imaginarios que hay entorno al tema de la seguridad en este territorio.
El documento inicia con la caracterización de la región del Magdalena Medio, delimitándola desde el punto geográfico y perfilando los aspectos sociales y económicos propios de la misma. El capítulo 2, aborda el conflicto armado en la región, analizando sus antecedentes desde mediados de la década de los 80’s hasta su configuración actual, en la que nuevos actores armados hacen presencia en el área. El capítulo 3, estudia la extorsión en la región y la caracteriza desde su tipo penal y su relación con otros delitos, con base en tres herramientas de análisis: estadísticas oficiales sobre el delito, entrevistas a actores clave en la región y seguimiento de medios de comunicación locales, regionales y nacionales durante el período 2006 – 2011. Finalmente, en el capítulo 4, se presentan las principales conclusiones del documento y se establecen algunas líneas de acción que permitirán construir estrategias y mecanismos adecuados para la intervención y mitigación del fenómeno de la extorsión.

Por favor pedir copia del documento directamente a la Fundación País Libre.

From the 1990s the Italian agribusiness sector is increasingly threatened by a new and dangerous phenomenon: organized crime in the agribusiness sector. The so-called "Agromafia" imposes its control throughout the whole agricultural supply chain, from production to retail, passing through the processing industry, transports and large-scale distribution. In this paper we examine the relationship between eco-crimes and consumer food and non-alcoholic drinks price index for the 20 Italian regions and 80 Italian provinces in the 1998-2016 period. At regional level, as a proxy for the Agromafia's activities, we build an ad hoc eco-criminal index for every region using data annually elaborated from Legambiente. At province level, as a proxy for Agromafia's activities, we use eight specific variables: extortions, counterfeiting, contraband, forest fires, all types of fires, money laundering, suspicious money transfers, and an ad hoc eco-criminal index. The analysis shows that the Agromafia can consistently affect the whole agribusiness sector, causing an increase in food prices, especially in south of the country. The ten most affected provinces by phenomenon register a food consumer price index about 12% higher than the least ten affected provinces. By the contrast, in the center-north of Italy money laundering seems to reduce food consumer prices through the reinvestment of illicit proceeds in firms with strong cost advantages.

The state occupies a central place in the study of a range of political, economic, and social outcomes. This article brings into dialogue literature on the state and emerging research on criminal politics through a study of protection rackets. Conceiving of criminal protection rackets as institutional arrangements of extraction and domination, I develop a political economy framework to explain variation in forms of resistance to rackets. The framework shows that distinct configurations of economic and political resources influence the type of resistance available to subordinates. I illustrate the framework's utility using micro-level data on resistance to rackets in Latin America. Attention to how resource endowments shape patterns of resistance to projects of extraction and domination provides a novel window into the bottom-up dynamics of state building.

Threatening to withhold Jewish divorce in order to extract concessions, which I term here the “get-threat,” is widely regarded as extortionist. Yet this view is commonly associated with skepticism towards agreements stemming from unequal bargaining power, or with a progressive view of the proper divorce regime. Building on contemporary discussions of what is known as “the paradox of blackmail” this article argues that in many cases get-threats should be regarded as simple cases of extortion even by libertarians and conservatives. It then presents and analyzes the best possible statement of defense for the practice of get-threats, designed for the “reasonable reactionary,” showing that even from that point of view get-threats should be limited in scope and magnitude to a narrow range of cases of justified, reasonable demands. The article thus offers both a precise analysis of a longstanding debate and a normative argument for its proper resolution.

This paper provides an estimate of the monetary proceeds from extortion racket accruing to the Italian mafias using two unique data sets: one recording periodic and one-time episodes of extortion from judicial and investigative sources, and another one consisting of a victimisation survey of Italian businesses. The estimate of the revenues at a national level lies between 2760 and 7740 mln euros. The regions with a strong presence of traditional organised crime groups remain the most exposed and provide about 65% of all extorted monetary flows, although some important regions in North Italy show a significant presence of extortion rackets in non-traditional areas. Finally, the most exacted economic activities are wholesale and retail trade that, along with construction, overall account up to 70% of all revenues in the lower-bound scenario.

This writ used to annul / discharge an unlawful arrest warrant used maliciously by the CITY of FORT LAUDERDALE to terrorize those who publicize the unlawful summary procedure tribunals they use to extort money from the People they are supposed to protect.

Online vydírání dětí v prostředí internetových služeb (sociálních sítí) se stalo velmi
nebezpečným fenoménem, který v českém prostředí v pozici oběti zažilo 6-8 % dětí.
Většina závažných případů vydírání postupuje podle několika základních schémat, podle
kterých lze rozpoznat, že je virtuální komunikace riziková. Na základě podrobné analýzy 15
případů online vydírání autor vytvořil model, podle kterého internetoví útočníci v praxi
postupují. Model je pro zpřehlednění rozložen do několika vzájemně propojených fází,
kterými online útok postupuje. Jednotlivé fáze jsou rozvedeny s použitím autentického
důkazního materiálu.

This paper investigates strategies that have been used in companies from different countries to alleviate the impact of extortion from armed groups in businesses, especially in construction companies.
Based on these experiences a risk management decision-­‐making criterion will be outlined, resulting on broad recommendations to assist local small and medium size companies in the decision-­‐making process
when dealing with an incident of extortion. At the end, a list of potential recommendations is highlighted to assist companies in this process. The methodology for this thesis is based on desk-­‐top research, literature review taken from companies’ websites, NGO’s websites, states reports, journal articles, statistics and relevant cases studies from
companies dealing with extortion. The outcome of this investigation would be a decision-­‐making criteria and a list of recommendations that
companies could use to mitigate or avoid extortions in Colombia.

The article compares two important experiences of the emergence and consolidation of armed non-state actors in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Michoacán, Mexico, noting the rise of the groups, their functioning, relationship with the state and involvement in new forms of governance in territorial control, population regulation and profit-making. These phenomena are part of a broader transformation related to political mutations that decentralize the state and generate specific subjective forms that modify the relationships between the individual, the social, the state, and the market.

Extortion as a crime has long attracted the interest of scholars, and much effort has been put into coining a precise definition that would allow distinguishing it from other similar predatory practices such as blackmail, bribery, coercion, and robbery. Academic literature classifies extortive practices according to their degree of complexity and involvement of organized crime. In this sense, the simplest form of extortion displays one offender who receives a one-time benefit from one victim, while the most sophisticated form is illustrated by racketeering, whereby an organized crime group systematically extorts money from multiple victims. Extortion as an organized crime activity can involve both episodic extortion practices and well-rooted systemic practices over a certain territory, where the latter is usually regarded as perpetrated by Mafia-type criminal organizations. Some scholars argue that extortion racketeering as a Mafia crime should be defined as sale and provision of extralegal protection services—protection of property rights, dispute resolution, and enforcement of contracts. However, others contend that extortion by Mafia-type organizations should not be counted as an economic activity but instead be considered a kind of illegal taxation that is imposed by quasi-political groups. Hence, they argue that it is a form of illegal governance and is a transfer of value that creates no economic output.
In contrast with the traditional understanding of extortion racketeering as “defining activity of organized crime,” some scholars have also focused on “extortion under color of office,” or, in other words, extortion perpetrated by public servants or politicians in their official capacity. Extortion has often been compared with bribery, since both crimes can be defined as an unlawful conversion of properties and goods belonging to someone else for one’s own personal use and benefit. The debate on the differences between bribery and extortion, however, is a contested one, and has followed two lines of argument: respectively, the degree of coercion involved in the crime and the role (or modus operandi) of public officials in the bribery and extortive scheme. The common element of both crimes is the fact that representatives of the state abuse their power and official position for their own benefit.

The report 'Extortion racketeering in the EU: vulnerability factors' analyses extortion racketeering forms and practices in six EU member states. The analysis disentangles the risk and the vulnerability factors for enterprises in two business sectors – agriculture and hospitality – as well as in the Chinese communities. Drawing on the results of the analysis, the report suggests new policies for tackling extortion racketeering in the EU. This report has been produced with the joint efforts of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Instituto de Ciencias Forenses y de la Seguridad – Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano and Vitosha Research and with the support of Guardia Civil in Spain.

Within the growing research on the politics of crime victims are seen as resigned to their fates at the hands of powerful criminal actors. But the conventional approach to criminal victimization as a traumatic but one-time act obscures from view a layer of contentious and dynamic politics between victims and criminal actors that we have yet to analyze. I develop a new theoretical framework to analyze the strategic behaviors that victims and criminals undertake as part of the political process of criminal victimization. The framework enables us to better observe, conceptualize and theorize how victims exercise agency vis-à-vis their criminal perpetrators, and the behaviors and practices that criminal victimizers undertake but which are overlooked by the traditional focus on their use and threat of coercive force. I illustrate the framework's analytic utility with an empirical analysis of the victimization of informal street vendors in a major Latin American city under a criminal protection racket. The argument and empirical findings suggest ways to expand and deepen the research agenda on the politics of criminal victimization.

This article aims to improve our understanding of criminal legitimacy-building phenomena by comparing extortion practices performed by criminal groups in Sicily, Italy and Michoacan, Mexico. It is argued that these extortion practices, known as pizzo in Italy and as cobro de piso in Mexico, do not only have a practical dimension but also a symbolic one. On the one hand, the practice of extortion produces incomes for the criminal group. On the other hand, extortion works as an authority claim and is linked to the political legitimacy discourse of the criminal group. This article explores this second, symbolic dimension of the practice of extortion by comparing the results of qualitative field research in Sicily and Michoacan. It is argued that extortion does not only work as a form of parallel taxing, but also shapes the contact and creates a closer relationship with the local population. Pizzo and piso then work as power-reaffirmation devices by configuring a particular political di...

This article aims to improve our understanding of criminal legitimacy-building phe- nomena by comparing extortion practices performed by criminal groups in Sicily, Italy and Michoacán, Mexico. It is argued that these extortion practices, known as pizzo in Italy and as cobro de piso in Mexico, do not only have a practical dimen- sion but also a symbolic one. On the one hand, the practice of extortion produces incomes for the criminal group. On the other hand, extortion works as an author- ity claim and is linked to the political legitimacy discourse of the criminal group. This article explores this second, symbolic dimension of the practice of extortion by comparing the results of qualitative field research in Sicily and Michoacán. It is argued that extortion does not only work as a form of parallel taxing, but also shapes the contact and creates a closer relationship with the local population. Pizzo and piso then work as power-reaffirmation devices by configuring a particular political display related to the political legitimacy interest of the criminal group that engages in extortion practices.