A 21st Century Strategy to Defeat Organized Crime: il contributo fornito dal One Step Ahead per contrastare l’organized crime.

Non é possibile concludere la tematica della criminalità organizzata senza menzionare il White Paper che é stato presentato ufficialmente al Parlamento nel marzo 2004: One step Ahead: A 21st Century Strategy to Defeat Organized Crime354.

Da questa iniziativa legislativa é infatti scaturito il Serious Organized Crime and Police Act del 2005 ed altri importanti interventi normativi.

Colpiscono i toni di introduzione del Documento: “Organized crime is big business. It causes untold harm on our streets, damage to our communities and nets billions of pounds each year for those responsible. Our world is becoming smaller through easier international travel and universal electronic communication and the 21st century will be a period of rapid and constant change with enormous potential for wealth creation. The message is not lost on terrorists and organized criminals. This White Paper describes how we plan to stay one step ahead of them”.

Il Governo inglese, presa piena consapevolezza della vastità del problema, ha deciso di intervenire su più fronti, non solo dal punto di vista operativo, tramite la creazione della SOCA, sfruttando la cooperazione con le forze di polizia interne e le organizzazioni comunitarie ed internazionali, ma anche cercando di cogliere gli aspetti principali del problema, le possibili soluzioni, contemplando ipotesi di adeguamento della legislazione vigente (conspiracy law etc.) affincate a possibili novità legislative.

Ha così schematizzato i fronti di possibile intervento:

• Reducing the profit incentive. We must restrict the opportunities for organized criminals to make money. This means reducing demand for the goods and services trafficked by criminal enterprises. It also means

354 _{Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Command of} Her Majesty March 2004, This White Paper looks at how our effort against organized crime can be enhanced. It builds on a comprehensive review, which looked at organizational structures, strategies, skills and capabilities and the case for new powers. It looks at how we can tackle organized crime internationally, nationally and at local level. The changes we are proposing here need to be seen alongside the wider, comprehensive reform programme we are undertaking in the rest of the criminal justice system. Dal Testo é scaturito the Government has now commissioned work to pull together a national strategy to link these “sectorial” strategies together, and in particular has established a new Cabinet sub-committee on Organized Crime. This group, chaired by the Home Secretary, includes all the Ministers with relevant responsibilities in this area. It has

reducing the vulnerability of the public and private sector to attack by organized crime;

• Disrupting activities. We must make criminal enterprises unprofitable in the UK by disrupting and dismantling them by all the means at our disposal, including adding to their costs and seizing their assets; and

• Increasing the risk. We must raise the personal risks for the criminals, particularly the kingpins of organized crime, by more successful and targeted prosecutions of the major players.

In riferimento alla conspiracy, si ammette un certo limite della stessa, così come strutturata, alla luce del fatto che consente una perseguibiltà di forme di criminalità minori e poco organizzate ma é indubbiamente insufficiente di fronte alla complessità strutturale delle grandi organizzazioni, in particolare per quanto concerne la possibilità di incriminazione dei soggetti in posizione di vertice.

Ciò induce anche a riflettere sulla “second participation”355.

Va preso atto del fatto che, per note ragioni socio-culturali, il nostro Paese ha da sempre avvertito come pressante il problema della lotta alla criminalità organizzata.

Da una parte questa tradizione forte va guardata con occhio positivo, dall’altra ha comportato le difficoltà che abbiamo provato a descrivere nel momento in cui l’Unione Europea e la Comunità internazionale hanno chiesto un impegno implicante degli inevitabili adeguamenti, se non proprio lo stravolgimento dell’intero sistema.

Il Regno Unito ha avuto un excursus storico differente, si sta infatti parlando di

355 _{Fondamentale il contributo di The Law Commission (LAW COM No 305) Participating in} crime, presentato al Parlamento dal Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice nel maggio

2007, nel quale si puntualizza che: The concepts of inchoate liability and of secondary liability have

long been recognized at common law. However, each is beset by problems. At common law the scope of inchoate liability is restricted to cases where D’s conduct consists of encouraging, as opposed to assisting, P to commit a principal offence. This has had an impact on the scope of secondary liability. The common law has compensated for the limited scope of inchoate liability by over-extending the scope of secondary liability. The primary recommendation of the first report is that inchoate liability should extend beyond encouragement to include acts of assistance as well. This recommendation now enables the problem of secondary liability’s scope to be addressed along with problems that have arisen in relation to the very nature of such liability, without the distraction of a simultaneous concern with the nature and scope of inchoate liability.

La conclusione del Documento consente di capire l’orientamento attuale: Taken together, the

recommendations contained in both reports would, if implemented, result in a scheme whereby inchoate and secondary liability will support and supplement each other in a way that is rational and fair.

uno Stato che fino a poco più di un decennio fa riteneva il problema della criminalità organizzata relativo sul proprio territorio e che, invece, ha dovuto prendere repentina consapevolezza di come la criminalità organizzata transnazionale non conosca limiti né confini356_.

Uno degli aspetti che maggiormente preoccupa le Istituzioni inglesi é il costo che le organizzazioni criminali comportano per i cittadini, che si riflette in negativo sull’intera economia inglese.

Le soluzioni prospettate sono interessanti e spaziano dalla riduzione delle opportunità di profitto, alla “distruzione” dei mercati in cui operano, passando per l’aumento dei rischi per chi pone in essere queste attività, in particolare per i capi, scoraggiati dalle possibili conseguenze del loro operato, eventualmente intervenendo in maniera decisa anche sul criminal justice system, onde evitare che continuino a resistere “zone franche”.

Sulla falsariga dell’ordinamento americano, si é preso in considerazione l’esempio del RICO.

La conclusione non é stata però del tutto positiva, tanto da indurre il Regno Unito ad ufficializzare le soluzioni prospettate in queste pagine: (…) To work, RICO still needs sufficient evidence to convict on the underlying ‘predicate’ offence before these can be set in the wider racketeering context. It does not, therefore, help against those targets who have evaded detection altogether. RICO appears to be more useful against traditional ‘racketeering’ organizations than the sort of large scale trafficking groups which are the main threat in the UK.

The latter tend to be prosecuted in the US, as in the UK, for standard conspiracy and trafficking offences.

We are assessing, however, the potential scope for improvements which could be made to existing law, particularly as it affects major organized crime cases. At present, the criminal law provisions most likely to be invoked against organized criminals require proof of a specific act of supply of a commodity. The evidential importance of seizing the commodity can tend to the prosecution of couriers and

356

Organized crime groups and terrorist groups have many similarities in their ways of operating. The powers and approaches outlined in this paper are designed to be effective against both. How much overlap there is in practice between the two types of groups is controversial. But there is clear evidence in Northern Ireland and many other places of a close link. Similarly, organized crime and terrorist groups have co-existed in a number of weak and failing states, like Afghanistan. Terrorist groups also routinely engage in criminal activities in order to raise funds, though rarely

minor players rather than the organisers.

A number of specific changes have been suggested, including creating a membership offence of belonging to an organized crime group, a new offence of trading in proscribed goods, changing the link between conspiracy and specific predicate offences, relaxing the ‘mens rea’ requirements for liability as a secondary party, and ways of admitting evidence of wider criminality to inform sentence.

The Home Office is considering in detail the law of conspiracy and secondary participation in order to assess the potential that these and other changes may have in enhancing the prospects of investigators and prosecutors in tackling modern organized crime, as well as the scope for making better use of existing provisions. We are looking to identify effective solutions focusing on organized criminality and would welcome views and examples of where the existing legislation could be improved.

We are particularly interested in the area of secondary participation, where a defendant may be aware he or she is engaging in organized crime, but can argue they are unaware of the precise nature of the criminality.

4.5 Il ruolo del SOCA: la risposta inglese alla lotta alla criminalità