NOTE : Philippines Urges Regional

[Rangoonp@xxxxxxx]

Subject: NOTE :  Philippines Urges Regional Crackdown on Mafias

NOTE : Many of these groups wound't exist for a few main reasons:
1) The ruling /controlling groups wouldn't invade other groups regions
or try to kill off some groups ( as the Chinese government tried to do
to the Shoalin people and temples. This led to creation of the Triads
(which was a good thing originally) and later became corrupt.)
2) The people were not economically and noutrishinally impoverished.


Philippines Urges Regional Crackdown on Mafias

            Reuters
            26-NOV-98

            MANILA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - The Philippines on Thursday
            urged its Asian neighbours to clamp down on mafia gangs
            which are reaping as much as $1 trillion a year in global
            profits. 

            Southeast Asian nations should "establish a culture of
            vigilance" as organised crime develops in the region,
Interior
            Secretary Ronaldo Puno told a meeting of the Association of
            South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). 

            He recommended the region intensify legal cooperation and
            exchanges of intelligence to fight the gangs whose global
            earnings exceed the gross domestic product of many
            countries in the world aside from a handful of the most
            industrialised. 

            Drug traffickers alone account for $400 billion of the
profits,
            he said, adding that technology was making criminals more
            sophisticated. 

            "Electronic commerce-- particularly the growing use of smart
            cards and cybercash-- has the potential to usher in a new
            era of untraceable criminal transactions: new money
            laundering techniques and faceless perpetrators," he added.

            In a speech read for him by an aide, he said the
            phenomenon of organised crime, once thought to be the
            preserve of Italian and U.S. mafias, had spawned gangs in
            Central and South America, Russia, China, the Middle East
            and Southeast Asia. 

            "They are engaged in such felonious activities as illicit
drug
            trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, arms smuggling,
            trafficking in persons and piracy," he said. 

            "According to recent international estimates, those
            organisations amass profits of approximately a trillion
dollars
            annually." 

            The two-day ASEAN meeting on trans-national crime, which
            ended on Thursday, was attended by police officials and
            experts from the ASEAN states of Malaysia, the Philippines,
            Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos and
            Myanmar.