Organized Crime and the Balkan Political Context

As part of a BTD funded research project, the RiskMonitor Foundation conducted six case studies aimed to clarify the interaction between organized crime and political environment on the Balkans. The research was done in accordance with comprehensive shared methodology and covered Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Serbia.

The studied countries cluster in three main groups. The first brings together Bulgaria and Romania, where the Soviet influence and political, economic, and military involvement were clearly distinct, as well as Albania. In these countries, the primary forms of organized crime were developed in the last decade of the regime with the active participation of the communist elites and the repressive apparatus. The lack of active lustration mechanisms allowed these prime forms to evolve and penetrate the political and economic processes of the unstable transition regimes.

Stoycho Stoychev, Jana Arsovska, Iva Pushkarova, Dalibor Dolezal, Charis Papacharalambous, Alina Han, Nemanja Nenadic

2009-2010

Full text of the publications is available here.