NCJ Number
204374
Date Published
2004
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the factors that contribute to the high prevalence of criminal economic activity in Ukraine.
Abstract
Criminal economic activities in Ukraine have skyrocketed following the economic, cultural, and political changes brought about by the transition from a socialist society to a democratic society with a market economy. In 1990 the Ministry of Internal Affairs recorded 35,723 economic crimes in Ukraine; in 1999 that number had risen to 65,724. Ukraine’s administrative bodies and law enforcement system are poorly equipped to handle this volume of criminal activity. The chapter focuses on analyzing five main factors contributing to the prevalence of criminal economic activity in Ukraine: political factors; economic factors; organizational and administrative factors; social and psychological factors; and legal factors. Politically, the state lost organizational control over the economy in the wake of reform efforts, making it difficult for government to implement effective countermeasures against economic crimes. Unfortunately, experience dictates that organized economic criminal activity cannot exist without the cooperation of government bodies. Thus, a symbiosis has occurred of the business, political, and criminal worlds in Ukraine. Economically, failed reform efforts in Ukraine have resulted undesirable outcomes, such as the unequal allocation of areas of the economy that yielded superprofits. These types of outcomes combined with the disruption of economic ties with countries of the former Soviet Union and the exclusion of the state from the regulation of economic processes have rendered the economy uncontrollable and ripe for criminal enterprise. Organizational and administrative failures have also contributed to the rise of economic crimes in Ukraine. Leaders and staff of administrative and economic bodies use property, goods, and financial resources without supervision and government regulation, while picking up in breadth but not depth, is ineffective. Social and psychological factors influencing the proliferation of economic crime in Ukraine develop out of a failing economy and political unrest, which lead to social pessimism , apathy, and political aggression. Legal factors contributing to the economic crime problem are a result of flaws in legislative regulation of political and economic reform. These flaws acting to destabilize the process of reform, rather than creating the sound legal foundation proactive legislation is designed to provide. Law enforcement agencies and supervisory bodies must be reformed in order to help state agencies battle organized crime in Ukraine. Notes, references