0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
These are grim economic times,

0:00:03.000,0:00:06.000
fellow TEDsters, grim economic times indeed.

0:00:06.000,0:00:09.000
And so, I would like to cheer you up

0:00:09.000,0:00:12.000
with one of the great, albeit largely unknown,

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
commercial success stories

0:00:14.000,0:00:16.000
of the past 20 years.

0:00:16.000,0:00:19.000
Comparable, in its own very peculiar way,

0:00:19.000,0:00:22.000
to the achievements of Microsoft or Google.

0:00:22.000,0:00:25.000
And it's an industry which has bucked the current recession

0:00:25.000,0:00:27.000
with equanimity.

0:00:27.000,0:00:30.000
I refer to organized crime.

0:00:30.000,0:00:32.000
Now organized crime has been around

0:00:32.000,0:00:35.000
for a very long time, I hear you say,

0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000
and these would be wise words, indeed.

0:00:37.000,0:00:40.000
But in the last two decades,

0:00:40.000,0:00:43.000
it has experienced an unprecedented expansion,

0:00:43.000,0:00:47.000
now accounting for roughly 15 percent

0:00:47.000,0:00:49.000
of the world's GDP.

0:00:49.000,0:00:52.000
I like to call it the Global Shadow Economy,

0:00:52.000,0:00:55.000
or McMafia, for short.

0:00:55.000,0:00:58.000
So what triggered this extraordinary growth

0:00:58.000,0:01:00.000
in cross-border crime?

0:01:00.000,0:01:02.000
Well, of course, there is globalization,

0:01:02.000,0:01:05.000
technology, communications, all that stuff,

0:01:05.000,0:01:08.000
which we'll talk about a little bit later.

0:01:08.000,0:01:11.000
But first, I would like to take you back

0:01:11.000,0:01:13.000
to this event:

0:01:13.000,0:01:15.000
the collapse of communism.

0:01:15.000,0:01:19.000
All across Eastern Europe, a most momentous episode

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
in our post-war history.

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
Now it's time for full disclosure.

0:01:24.000,0:01:27.000
This event meant a great deal to me personally.

0:01:27.000,0:01:31.000
I had started smuggling books across the Iron Curtain

0:01:31.000,0:01:33.000
to Democratic opposition groups in Eastern Europe,

0:01:33.000,0:01:35.000
like Solidarity in Poland,

0:01:35.000,0:01:37.000
when I was in my teens.

0:01:37.000,0:01:41.000
I then started writing about Eastern Europe,

0:01:41.000,0:01:45.000
and eventually I became the BBC's chief correspondent for the region,

0:01:45.000,0:01:49.000
which is what I was doing in 1989.

0:01:49.000,0:01:53.000
And so when 425 million people

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
finally won the right

0:01:55.000,0:01:57.000
to choose their own governments,

0:01:57.000,0:02:00.000
I was ecstatic,

0:02:00.000,0:02:02.000
but I was also a touch worried

0:02:02.000,0:02:04.000
about some of the nastier things

0:02:04.000,0:02:06.000
lurking behind the wall.

0:02:06.000,0:02:08.000
It wasn't long, for example,

0:02:08.000,0:02:10.000
before ethnic nationalism

0:02:10.000,0:02:12.000
reared its bloody head

0:02:12.000,0:02:14.000
in Yugoslavia.

0:02:14.000,0:02:16.000
And amongst the chaos,

0:02:16.000,0:02:18.000
amidst the euphoria,

0:02:18.000,0:02:20.000
it took me a little while to understand

0:02:20.000,0:02:23.000
that some of the people who had wielded power

0:02:23.000,0:02:27.000
before 1989, in Eastern Europe,

0:02:27.000,0:02:31.000
continued to do so after the revolutions there.

0:02:31.000,0:02:35.000
Obviously there were characters like this.

0:02:35.000,0:02:39.000
But there were also some more unexpected people

0:02:39.000,0:02:43.000
who played a critical role in what was going on in Eastern Europe.

0:02:43.000,0:02:46.000
Like this character. Remember these guys?

0:02:46.000,0:02:48.000
They used to win the gold medals in weightlifting

0:02:48.000,0:02:51.000
and wrestling, every four years in the Olympics,

0:02:51.000,0:02:54.000
and they were the great celebrities of communism,

0:02:54.000,0:02:57.000
with a fabulous lifestyle to go with it.

0:02:57.000,0:02:59.000
They used to get great apartments in the center of town,

0:02:59.000,0:03:01.000
casual sex on tap,

0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000
and they could travel to the West very freely,

0:03:04.000,0:03:07.000
which was a great luxury at the time.

0:03:07.000,0:03:11.000
It may come as a surprise, but they played a critical role

0:03:11.000,0:03:13.000
in the emergence of the market economy

0:03:13.000,0:03:15.000
in Eastern Europe.

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
Or as I like to call them, they are

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
the midwives of capitalism.

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
Here are some of those same weightlifters

0:03:22.000,0:03:25.000
after their 1989 makeover.

0:03:25.000,0:03:28.000
Now in Bulgaria --

0:03:28.000,0:03:30.000
this photograph was taken in Bulgaria --

0:03:30.000,0:03:33.000
when communism collapsed all over Eastern Europe,

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
it wasn't just communism;

0:03:35.000,0:03:37.000
it was the state that collapsed as well.

0:03:37.000,0:03:39.000
That means your police force wasn't working.

0:03:39.000,0:03:42.000
The court system wasn't functioning properly.

0:03:42.000,0:03:47.000
So what was a business man in the brave new world

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
of East European capitalism going to do

0:03:49.000,0:03:53.000
to make sure that his contracts would be honored?

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
Well, he would turn to people who were called, rather prosaically

0:03:56.000,0:04:00.000
by sociologists, privatized law enforcement agencies.

0:04:00.000,0:04:04.000
We prefer to know them as the mafia.

0:04:04.000,0:04:07.000
And in Bulgaria, the mafia was soon joined

0:04:07.000,0:04:09.000
with 14,000 people

0:04:09.000,0:04:13.000
who were sacked from their jobs in the security services

0:04:13.000,0:04:15.000
between 1989 and 1991.

0:04:15.000,0:04:19.000
Now, when your state is collapsing,

0:04:19.000,0:04:22.000
your economy is heading south at a rate of knots,

0:04:22.000,0:04:25.000
the last people you want coming on to the labor market

0:04:25.000,0:04:28.000
are 14,000 men and women whose chief skills

0:04:28.000,0:04:30.000
are surveillance,

0:04:30.000,0:04:33.000
are smuggling, building underground networks

0:04:33.000,0:04:36.000
and killing people.

0:04:36.000,0:04:39.000
But that's what happened all over Eastern Europe.

0:04:39.000,0:04:44.000
Now, when I was working in the 1990s,

0:04:44.000,0:04:47.000
I spent most of the time covering

0:04:47.000,0:04:50.000
the appalling conflict in Yugoslavia.

0:04:50.000,0:04:52.000
And I couldn't help notice

0:04:52.000,0:04:56.000
that the people who were perpetrating the appalling atrocities,

0:04:56.000,0:04:59.000
the paramilitary organizations,

0:04:59.000,0:05:01.000
were actually the same people running

0:05:01.000,0:05:04.000
the organized criminal syndicates.

0:05:04.000,0:05:08.000
And I came to think that behind the violence

0:05:08.000,0:05:11.000
lay a sinister criminal enterprise.

0:05:11.000,0:05:15.000
And so I resolved to travel around the world

0:05:15.000,0:05:18.000
examining this global criminal underworld

0:05:18.000,0:05:20.000
by talking to policemen,

0:05:20.000,0:05:23.000
by talking to victims, by talking to consumers

0:05:23.000,0:05:25.000
of illicit goods and services.

0:05:25.000,0:05:30.000
But above all else, by talking to the gangsters themselves.

0:05:30.000,0:05:33.000
And the Balkans was a fabulous place to start.

0:05:33.000,0:05:35.000
Why? Well of course

0:05:35.000,0:05:37.000
there was the issue of law and order collapsing,

0:05:37.000,0:05:39.000
but also, as they say in the retail trade,

0:05:39.000,0:05:43.000
it's location, location, location.

0:05:43.000,0:05:45.000
And what I noticed at the beginning of my research

0:05:45.000,0:05:50.000
that the Balkans had turned into a vast transit zone

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
for illicit goods and services coming from all over the world.

0:05:53.000,0:05:55.000
Heroin, cocaine,

0:05:55.000,0:05:58.000
women being trafficked into prostitution

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
and precious minerals.

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
And where were they heading?

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
The European Union, which by now

0:06:04.000,0:06:08.000
was beginning to reap the benefits of globalization,

0:06:08.000,0:06:10.000
transforming it into

0:06:10.000,0:06:13.000
the most affluent consumer market in history,

0:06:13.000,0:06:16.000
eventually comprising some 500 million people.

0:06:16.000,0:06:19.000
And a significant minority

0:06:19.000,0:06:21.000
of those 500 million people

0:06:21.000,0:06:24.000
like to spend some of their leisure time and spare cash

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
sleeping with prostitutes,

0:06:26.000,0:06:29.000
sticking 50 Euro notes up their nose

0:06:29.000,0:06:32.000
and employing illegal migrant laborers.

0:06:32.000,0:06:36.000
Now, organized crime in a globalizing world

0:06:36.000,0:06:38.000
operates in the same way as any other business.

0:06:38.000,0:06:41.000
It has zones of production,

0:06:41.000,0:06:44.000
like Afghanistan and Columbia.

0:06:44.000,0:06:46.000
It has zones of distribution,

0:06:46.000,0:06:49.000
like Mexico and the Balkans.

0:06:49.000,0:06:53.000
And then, of course, it has zones of consumption,

0:06:53.000,0:06:55.000
like the European Union, Japan

0:06:55.000,0:06:58.000
and of course, the United States.

0:06:58.000,0:07:01.000
The zones of production and distribution

0:07:01.000,0:07:04.000
tend to lie in the developing world,

0:07:04.000,0:07:08.000
and they are often threatened by appalling violence

0:07:08.000,0:07:10.000
and bloodshed.

0:07:10.000,0:07:12.000
Take Mexico, for example.

0:07:12.000,0:07:16.000
Six thousand people killed there in the last 18 months

0:07:16.000,0:07:20.000
as a direct consequence of the cocaine trade.

0:07:20.000,0:07:24.000
But what about the Democratic Republic of Congo?

0:07:24.000,0:07:30.000
Since 1998, five million people have died there.

0:07:30.000,0:07:32.000
It's not a conflict you read about much in the newspapers,

0:07:32.000,0:07:35.000
but it's the biggest conflict on this planet

0:07:35.000,0:07:37.000
since the Second World War.

0:07:37.000,0:07:40.000
And why is it? Because mafias from all around the world

0:07:40.000,0:07:43.000
cooperate with local paramilitaries

0:07:43.000,0:07:46.000
in order to seize the supplies

0:07:46.000,0:07:48.000
of the rich mineral resources

0:07:48.000,0:07:50.000
of the region.

0:07:50.000,0:07:54.000
In the year 2000, 80 percent of the world's coltan

0:07:54.000,0:07:56.000
was sourced to the killing fields

0:07:56.000,0:08:00.000
of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

0:08:00.000,0:08:04.000
Now, coltan you will find in almost every mobile phone,

0:08:04.000,0:08:06.000
in almost every laptop

0:08:06.000,0:08:08.000
and games console.

0:08:08.000,0:08:11.000
The Congolese war lords were selling this stuff to the mafia

0:08:11.000,0:08:13.000
in exchange for weapons,

0:08:13.000,0:08:17.000
and the mafia would then sell it on to Western markets.

0:08:17.000,0:08:19.000
And it is this Western desire

0:08:19.000,0:08:21.000
to consume

0:08:21.000,0:08:24.000
that is the primary driver

0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000
of international organized crime.

0:08:27.000,0:08:31.000
Now, let me show you some of my friends in action,

0:08:31.000,0:08:34.000
caught conveniently on film by the Italian police,

0:08:34.000,0:08:37.000
and smuggling duty-not-paid cigarettes.

0:08:37.000,0:08:40.000
Now, cigarettes out the factory gate are very cheap.

0:08:40.000,0:08:44.000
The European Union then imposes the highest taxes on them in the world.

0:08:44.000,0:08:47.000
So if you can smuggle them into the E.U.,

0:08:47.000,0:08:50.000
there are very handsome profits to be made,

0:08:50.000,0:08:52.000
and I want to show you this to demonstrate

0:08:52.000,0:08:55.000
the type of resources available to these groups.

0:08:55.000,0:08:59.000
This boat is worth one million Euros when it's new.

0:08:59.000,0:09:03.000
And it's the fastest thing on European waters.

0:09:03.000,0:09:06.000
From 1994, for seven years,

0:09:06.000,0:09:08.000
20 of these boats

0:09:08.000,0:09:11.000
made the trip across the Adriatic,

0:09:11.000,0:09:14.000
from Montenegro to Italy, every single night.

0:09:14.000,0:09:16.000
And as a consequence of this trade,

0:09:16.000,0:09:21.000
Britain alone lost eight billion dollars in revenue.

0:09:21.000,0:09:25.000
And instead that money went to underwrite the wars in Yugoslavia

0:09:25.000,0:09:29.000
and line the pockets of unscrupulous individuals.

0:09:29.000,0:09:32.000
Now Italian police, when this trade started,

0:09:32.000,0:09:36.000
had just two boats which could go at the same speed.

0:09:36.000,0:09:38.000
And this is very important, because the only way you can catch these guys

0:09:38.000,0:09:41.000
is if they run out of gas.

0:09:41.000,0:09:43.000
Sometimes the gangsters would bring with them

0:09:43.000,0:09:46.000
women being trafficked into prostitution,

0:09:46.000,0:09:48.000
and if the police intervened, they would hurl

0:09:48.000,0:09:51.000
the women into the sea

0:09:51.000,0:09:53.000
so that the police had to go and save them from drowning,

0:09:53.000,0:09:57.000
rather than chasing the bad guys.

0:09:57.000,0:10:00.000
So I have shown you this to demonstrate

0:10:00.000,0:10:02.000
how many boats, how many vessels it takes

0:10:02.000,0:10:04.000
to catch one of these guys.

0:10:04.000,0:10:06.000
And the answer is six vessels.

0:10:06.000,0:10:09.000
And remember, 20 of these speed boats

0:10:09.000,0:10:11.000
were coming across the Adriatic

0:10:11.000,0:10:13.000
every single night.

0:10:13.000,0:10:17.000
So what were these guys doing with all the money they were making?

0:10:17.000,0:10:21.000
Well, this is where we come to globalization,

0:10:21.000,0:10:24.000
because that was not just the deregulation of global trade.

0:10:24.000,0:10:27.000
It was the liberalization of international financial markets.

0:10:27.000,0:10:30.000
And boy, did that make it easy

0:10:30.000,0:10:32.000
for the money launderers.

0:10:32.000,0:10:35.000
The last two decades have been the champagne era

0:10:35.000,0:10:37.000
for dirty lucre.

0:10:37.000,0:10:41.000
In the 1990s, we saw financial centers around the world

0:10:41.000,0:10:44.000
competing for their business,

0:10:44.000,0:10:46.000
and there was simply no effective mechanism

0:10:46.000,0:10:48.000
to prevent money laundering.

0:10:48.000,0:10:51.000
And a lot of licit banks were also happy

0:10:51.000,0:10:54.000
to accept deposits

0:10:54.000,0:10:56.000
from very dubious sources

0:10:56.000,0:10:59.000
without questions being asked.

0:10:59.000,0:11:03.000
But at the heart of this, is the offshore banking network.

0:11:03.000,0:11:06.000
Now these things

0:11:06.000,0:11:09.000
are an essential part of the money laundering parade,

0:11:09.000,0:11:13.000
and if you want to do something about illegal tax evasion

0:11:13.000,0:11:17.000
and transnational organized crime, money laundering,

0:11:17.000,0:11:19.000
you have to get rid of them.

0:11:19.000,0:11:22.000
On a positive note, we at last have someone in the White House

0:11:22.000,0:11:25.000
who has consistently spoken out

0:11:25.000,0:11:28.000
against these corrosive entities.

0:11:28.000,0:11:32.000
And if anyone is concerned about what I believe

0:11:32.000,0:11:35.000
is the necessity for

0:11:35.000,0:11:38.000
new legislation, regulation, effective regulation,

0:11:38.000,0:11:42.000
I say, let's take a look at Bernie Madoff,

0:11:42.000,0:11:46.000
who is now going to be spending the rest of his life in jail.

0:11:46.000,0:11:52.000
Bernie Madoff stole 65 billion dollars.

0:11:52.000,0:11:55.000
That puts him up there on the Olympus of gangsters

0:11:55.000,0:11:57.000
with the Colombian cartels

0:11:57.000,0:12:00.000
and the major Russian crime syndicates,

0:12:00.000,0:12:02.000
but he did this for decades

0:12:02.000,0:12:04.000
in the very heart of Wall Street,

0:12:04.000,0:12:07.000
and no regulator picked up on it.

0:12:07.000,0:12:10.000
So how many other Madoffs are there on Wall Street

0:12:10.000,0:12:12.000
or in the city of London,

0:12:12.000,0:12:14.000
fleecing ordinary folk

0:12:14.000,0:12:16.000
and money laundering?

0:12:16.000,0:12:20.000
Well I can tell you, it's quite a few of them.

0:12:20.000,0:12:24.000
Let me go on to the 101 of international organized crime now.

0:12:24.000,0:12:28.000
And that is narcotics. Our second marijuana farm photograph for the morning.

0:12:28.000,0:12:31.000
This one, however, is in central British Columbia

0:12:31.000,0:12:33.000
where I photographed it.

0:12:33.000,0:12:35.000
It's one of the tens of thousands

0:12:35.000,0:12:38.000
of mom-and-pop grow-ops in B.C.

0:12:38.000,0:12:41.000
which ensure that over five percent

0:12:41.000,0:12:45.000
of the province's GDP is accounted for by this trade.

0:12:45.000,0:12:50.000
Now, I was taken by inspector Brian Cantera,

0:12:50.000,0:12:52.000
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,

0:12:52.000,0:12:54.000
to a cavernous warehouse east of Vancouver

0:12:54.000,0:12:58.000
to see some of the goods which are regularly confiscated

0:12:58.000,0:13:00.000
by the RCMP

0:13:00.000,0:13:02.000
from the smugglers who are sending it,

0:13:02.000,0:13:05.000
of course, down south to the United States

0:13:05.000,0:13:07.000
where there is an insatiable market

0:13:07.000,0:13:10.000
for B.C. Bud, as it's called,

0:13:10.000,0:13:12.000
in part because it's marketed as organic,

0:13:12.000,0:13:16.000
which of course goes down very well in California.

0:13:16.000,0:13:18.000
(Laughter)

0:13:18.000,0:13:19.000
(Applause)

0:13:19.000,0:13:22.000
Now, even by the police's admission,

0:13:22.000,0:13:27.000
this makes not a dent in the profits, really,

0:13:27.000,0:13:29.000
of the major exporters.

0:13:29.000,0:13:31.000
Since the beginning of globalization,

0:13:31.000,0:13:35.000
the global narcotics market has expanded enormously.

0:13:35.000,0:13:38.000
There has, however, been no concomitant increase

0:13:38.000,0:13:41.000
in the resources available

0:13:41.000,0:13:43.000
to police forces.

0:13:43.000,0:13:48.000
This, however, may all be about to change,

0:13:48.000,0:13:50.000
because something very strange is going on.

0:13:50.000,0:13:52.000
The United Nations recognized

0:13:52.000,0:13:55.000
earlier this -- it was last month actually --

0:13:55.000,0:14:01.000
that Canada has become a key area of distribution and production

0:14:01.000,0:14:05.000
of ecstasy and other synthetic drugs.

0:14:05.000,0:14:07.000
Interestingly, the market share

0:14:07.000,0:14:10.000
of heroin and cocaine is going down,

0:14:10.000,0:14:15.000
because the pills are getting ever better at reproducing their highs.

0:14:15.000,0:14:19.000
Now that is a game changer,

0:14:19.000,0:14:23.000
because it shifts production away from the developing world

0:14:23.000,0:14:27.000
and into the Western world.

0:14:27.000,0:14:29.000
When that happens, it is a trend

0:14:29.000,0:14:33.000
which is set to overwhelm our policing capacity in the West.

0:14:33.000,0:14:37.000
The drugs policy which we've had in place for 40 years

0:14:37.000,0:14:42.000
is long overdue for a very serious rethink,

0:14:42.000,0:14:44.000
in my opinion.

0:14:44.000,0:14:46.000
Now, the recession.

0:14:46.000,0:14:48.000
Well, organized crime has already adapted

0:14:48.000,0:14:50.000
very well to the recession.

0:14:50.000,0:14:52.000
Not surprising, the most opportunistic industry

0:14:52.000,0:14:54.000
in the whole world.

0:14:54.000,0:14:58.000
And it has no rules to its regulatory system.

0:14:58.000,0:15:02.000
Except, of course, it has two business risks:

0:15:02.000,0:15:04.000
arrest by law enforcement,

0:15:04.000,0:15:06.000
which is, frankly, the least of their worries,

0:15:06.000,0:15:09.000
and competition from other groups,

0:15:09.000,0:15:11.000
i.e. a bullet in the back of the head.

0:15:11.000,0:15:14.000
What they've done is they've shifted their operations.

0:15:14.000,0:15:18.000
People don't smoke as much dope, or visit prostitutes quite so frequently

0:15:18.000,0:15:20.000
during a recession.

0:15:20.000,0:15:22.000
And so instead, they have invaded financial

0:15:22.000,0:15:24.000
and corporate crime in a big way,

0:15:24.000,0:15:26.000
but above all, two sectors,

0:15:26.000,0:15:29.000
and that is counterfeit goods

0:15:29.000,0:15:31.000
and cybercrime.

0:15:31.000,0:15:33.000
And it's been terribly successful.

0:15:33.000,0:15:36.000
I would like to introduce you to Mr. Pringle.

0:15:36.000,0:15:40.000
Or perhaps I should say, more accurately, Señor Pringle.

0:15:40.000,0:15:44.000
I was introduced to this bit of kit by a Brazilian cybercriminal.

0:15:44.000,0:15:46.000
We sat in a car on the Avenue Paulista

0:15:46.000,0:15:48.000
in São Paulo, together.

0:15:48.000,0:15:50.000
Hooked it up to my laptop,

0:15:50.000,0:15:53.000
and within about five minutes he had penetrated

0:15:53.000,0:15:55.000
the computer security system

0:15:55.000,0:15:58.000
of a major Brazilian bank.

0:15:58.000,0:16:00.000
It's really not that difficult.

0:16:00.000,0:16:03.000
And it's actually much easier because

0:16:03.000,0:16:05.000
the fascinating thing about cybercrime

0:16:05.000,0:16:09.000
is that it's not so much the technology.

0:16:09.000,0:16:13.000
The key to cybercrime is what we call social engineering.

0:16:13.000,0:16:15.000
Or to use the technical term for it,

0:16:15.000,0:16:18.000
there's one born every minute.

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
You would not believe how easy it is

0:16:21.000,0:16:24.000
to persuade people to do things with their computers

0:16:24.000,0:16:27.000
which are objectively not in their interest.

0:16:27.000,0:16:29.000
And it was very soon

0:16:29.000,0:16:31.000
when the cybercriminals learned that the quickest way to do this,

0:16:31.000,0:16:35.000
of course, the quickest way to a person's wallet

0:16:35.000,0:16:38.000
is through the promise of sex and love.

0:16:38.000,0:16:41.000
I expect some of you remember the ILOVEYOU virus,

0:16:41.000,0:16:45.000
one of the very great worldwide viruses that came.

0:16:45.000,0:16:48.000
I was very fortunate when the ILOVEYOU virus came out,

0:16:48.000,0:16:51.000
because the first person I received it from

0:16:51.000,0:16:53.000
was an ex-girlfriend of mine.

0:16:53.000,0:16:58.000
Now, she harbored all sorts of sentiments and emotions towards me at the time,

0:16:58.000,0:17:00.000
but love was not amongst them.

0:17:00.000,0:17:02.000
(Laughter)

0:17:02.000,0:17:06.000
And so as soon as I saw this drop into my inbox,

0:17:06.000,0:17:09.000
I dispatched it hastily to the recycle bin

0:17:09.000,0:17:14.000
and spared myself a very nasty infection.

0:17:14.000,0:17:18.000
So, cybercrime, do watch out for it.

0:17:18.000,0:17:20.000
One thing that we do know that the Internet is doing

0:17:20.000,0:17:23.000
is the Internet is assisting these guys.

0:17:23.000,0:17:26.000
These are mosquitos who carry the malarial parasite

0:17:26.000,0:17:30.000
which infests our blood when the mosy has had a free meal

0:17:30.000,0:17:32.000
at our expense.

0:17:32.000,0:17:35.000
Now, Artesunate is a very effective drug

0:17:35.000,0:17:38.000
at destroying the parasite in the early days

0:17:38.000,0:17:40.000
of infection.

0:17:40.000,0:17:42.000
But over the past year or so,

0:17:42.000,0:17:45.000
researchers in Cambodia have discovered

0:17:45.000,0:17:48.000
that what's happening is

0:17:48.000,0:17:51.000
the malarial parasite is developing a resistance.

0:17:51.000,0:17:54.000
And they fear that the reason why it's developing a resistance

0:17:54.000,0:17:58.000
is because Cambodians can't afford the drugs on the commercial market,

0:17:58.000,0:18:01.000
and so they buy it from the Internet.

0:18:01.000,0:18:03.000
And these pills contain only low doses

0:18:03.000,0:18:05.000
of the active ingredient.

0:18:05.000,0:18:07.000
Which is why

0:18:07.000,0:18:11.000
the parasite is beginning to develop a resistance.

0:18:11.000,0:18:13.000
The reason I say this

0:18:13.000,0:18:15.000
is because we have to know

0:18:15.000,0:18:17.000
that organized crime

0:18:17.000,0:18:20.000
impacts all sorts of areas of our lives.

0:18:20.000,0:18:23.000
You don't have to sleep with prostitutes

0:18:23.000,0:18:25.000
or take drugs

0:18:25.000,0:18:27.000
in order to have a relationship with organized crime.

0:18:27.000,0:18:29.000
They affect our bank accounts.

0:18:29.000,0:18:31.000
They affect our communications, our pension funds.

0:18:31.000,0:18:35.000
They even affect the food that we eat

0:18:35.000,0:18:37.000
and our governments.

0:18:37.000,0:18:40.000
This is no longer an issue

0:18:40.000,0:18:43.000
of Sicilians from Palermo and New York.

0:18:43.000,0:18:46.000
There is no romance involved with gangsters

0:18:46.000,0:18:48.000
in the 21st Century.

0:18:48.000,0:18:51.000
This is a mighty industry,

0:18:51.000,0:18:54.000
and it creates instability and violence

0:18:54.000,0:18:56.000
wherever it goes.

0:18:56.000,0:18:58.000
It is a major economic force

0:18:58.000,0:19:02.000
and we need to take it very, very seriously.

0:19:02.000,0:19:04.000
It's been a privilege talking to you.

0:19:04.000,0:19:06.000
Thank you very much.

0:19:06.000,0:19:09.000
(Applause)