Global Mafia: The New World Order of Organized Crime

Louis A. Knafla is a professor of history at the University of Calgary
and the co-editor of Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal
History.

Open borders, weak commercial and banking laws, lax immigration
policies, and soft criminal courts have enabled organized crime to
flourish in Canada as never before. So contend Antonio Nicaso, a
specialist in the field of international organized crime, and Lee
Lamothe, a former crime reporter for The Toronto Sun, in this highly
readable account of the rise of organized mafias in Canada.

Part 1 (“The Players”) examines the Italian Mafia, as well as
Russian, Eastern European, Asian, and Colombian crime groups. According
to the authors, the economies of California and Florida, like that of
Canada, are dependent upon the drug trade. Moreover, Canada has become
the most active centre of East European Mafia activity outside of
Russia. The authors’ use of selective evidence in this section leaves
some of its claims open to question.

Part 2 (“The Plays”) comprises case studies of the Filonov
brothers, drug kings Sergey and Taras, who set up shop in Vancouver in
the mid-1980s; the Toronto-based Diego Serrano Organization, the new
global profiteers; and the Calabrian ’ndrangheta clan, a major player
in the North American drug underworld. The authors see cooperation among
international agencies as a key factor in combating the global mafias.