International crime-fighting strategies - Robert S. Gelbard, Asst. Sec. for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, Dec, 1995

The rapid installation of some 1,000 police monitors and support staff from 20 different countries, followed by speedy training in collaboration with our Justice Department to start up the new National Haitian Police Force, were essential elements in the overall effort. Crime, of course, has not been eradicated in Haiti, but law enforcement in the country, based on community policing and the protection of human rights, is making important strides. Certainly, our experience in Haiti prepares us, with the international community, to confront similar situations in other parts of the world.

The Administration is honing its ability to respond to other transnational crime that threatens the security of our own and other nations. With the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example, we are working to develop new programs to counter the destabilizing influences of international alien amuggling, which the President calls "the traffic in human misery." This global, criminal activity pays handsomely for highly organized groups that earn billions with relatively little risk of detection or punishment. On a bilateral and multilateral basis, we are working to secure new laws that criminalize alien smuggling which, remarkably, is still not a crime in most countries. We have reports of literally thousands of illegal aliens all over the world, most of them apparently "warehoused" by the smugglers for eventual delivery to the U.S. These include as many as 60,000 Chinese illegally in Moscow and innumerable Asians presently located in various spots throughout Latin America.

Similarly, we have responded concretely to criminal activity that directly affects American business. Each year, thousands of cars stolen from the U.S. wind up in Central America. With the support of the National Insurance Crime Bureau--NICB--we have undertaken initiatives designed to halt this thievery, which causes astronomical losses for ordinary Americans. Special treaties designed to help recover stolen vehicles have been signed with seven Central American countries, and new FBI-designed training programs for stolen car investigations are underway for local law enforcement officials in Latin America. The NICB considers the training so critical that it is helping to underwrite a portion of it.

The Crime Initiative

I would like to turn for a moment to the President's new Crime Initiative. The new Presidential Directive, made public at the UN, is important because it reinforces our mandate for combating transnational crime. Moreover, it clearly establishes the principle that fighting crime is not just a domestic or internal matter. Taken as a whole, the initiative provides a comprehensive policy framework for combating this growing threat to our national security.

Key to this framework is the Executive Order under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act--IEEPA--aimed at ending the scourge that major narcotics traffickers centered in Colombia have wrought in the United States and beyond. The IEEPA Executive Order is designed to deny such traffickers the benefit of assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction and to prevent U.S. persons from engaging in commercial and financial dealings with them. The money laundering initiative instructs the Secretaries of State and Treasury and the Attorney General to identify the nations that are most egregious in facilitating criminal money laundering and press them to enter into bilateral or multilateral arrangements to conform to international standards against money laundering or face possible sanctions.