Professional crime across the Finnish-Estonian border

Abstract

Activities of Finnish professional criminals across theFinnish-Estonian border in the 1990s are studied in the light of two typesof data: non-public intelligence records of Finnish police and customs, andexpert interviews with Finnish and Estonian crime investigators and liaisonofficers. For practical purposes, professional crime is defined here asoffences that are planned, involve considerable material values, and aresanctioned with imprisonment. The volume of crime taking place in thecross-border scene is assessed to be much larger than reported in publicsources based on police-reported crimes and court verdicts. The largestgroups of crimes involved have to do with the import of narcotics, alcohol,and cigarettes from Estonia to Finland, price differentials being the centraldriving force. The total profile of professional crime in this scene, however,involves a much broader scope of criminal activities, including evenlarge-scale frauds where Finnish fraudsters have taken advantage of the goodfaith of Estonian banks and businessmen. The lifetime of the operationsdescribed mostly remains below one year. Many of the persons involved,however, do represent long and persistent careers. Their criminal operationsare usually organised according to a project model rather than a stableorganisation model. The authors recommend national police, customs andtax authorities to join forces and share intelligence for a fuller overallpicture of the situation and for improved efficiency of control andprevention. Further, co-operation between Finnish and Estonian lawenforcement agencies is judged to be in serious need of improvement, if the authorities sincerely wish to get to grips with the voluminous operationsof professional offenders in this scene.