Today's international criminals tend to be savvy,well-heeled, and far better equipped than the people chasing them. An international expert on drug crime has two words of advice for Asian law enforcers--integrate, cooperate.
In March 1997, the Ministry of Justice's Investigation Bureau (MJIB) hosted an International Counter-Narcotics Conference in Taipei, the fourth since 1990. The idea was to provide the participants with an opportunity to exchange information, build rapport, and discuss possibilities for further international cooperation. Delegates from America, Japan, Britain, Canada, South Korea, Italy, Germany, and Singapore attended the five-day conference. For the most part they were law enforcement officials engaged in the actual war against drugs.
Dr. Barry A.K. Rider, director of the British National Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, was one of the participants. Besides teaching law, he is also a civil servant responsible for supervising the investigation of international organized crime. For the last twelve years, he has worked closely with a number of Taiwan's law-enforcement agencies, especially the MJIB. He agreed to be interviewed by the Free China Review. Excerpts follow.
FCR: As a specialist in both financial law and anti-drug law enforcement, do you see a connection between economic crime and drug crimes?
Barry Rider: Drug trafficking today is economic crime, because people deal in drugs to make money. One of our most important strategies is to focus on the money behind the drug cartels. By looking at where the money goes, you can get a better picture of the criminal organization. Also, by using legal mechanisms to forfeit and confiscate the proceeds of crime, you can bankrupt criminal organizations. But the more you try to take the money out of organized crime, the more organized crime will fight it.
The proceeds of crime undergo a process known as money laundering. Taiwan is about to enact new laws to deal with this [the Money Laundering Control Act, passed in April 1997, the first of its kind in Asia]. This is extremely important, because the more money laundering that takes place, the greater the risks to banks and other financi al institutions in Taiwan. That is why the Ministry of Finance here is so concerned about the issue.
What advice do you have for Taiwan's law enforcement agencies?
One thing to concentrate on is making it unprofitable to engage in drug trafficking. A difficulty is that your legislation is very similar to laws in certain other countries, including the United Kingdom, which have not worked very well. If you are trying to take away the profit generated by a crime, you have to show that the money is the proceeds of a specific crime, and that is difficult to prove.
I think this is highly controversial in Taiwan, because what it will mean doing in effect is providing that if somebody has a large amount of money and they can't explain where they got it from, there is a presumption that it is the proceeds of corruption or the proceeds of a crime. The Italians have done that in regard to the Mafia. We've enacted laws similar to what I've just suggested in Northern Ireland, to counter terrori sm. That is the strategy I've suggested to the MJIB. Frankly, I think it would be unpopular in Taiwan. Whether such a law will be passed here depends on how serious your government thinks the problem is.
The second strategy that I think has to be adopted is that of interagency task forces. The police and the MJIB cannot deal with this kind of problem on their own. You need an integrated task force approach. You need to bring in banking regulators, security commissions, immigration and customs officers, even the military police. To some extent you already do that, but I think it would be very good to expand it. What this task force needs is very good intelligence. They need intelligence not just in regard to organizations and trafficking, but specifically to the funding of the trafficking, because that's the weak spot.
The third strategy is international cooperation. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how effective you are in Taiwan--if you can't get the necessary evidence fr om overseas, if you can't get other countries to cooperate by giving you intelligence, you're only going to have limited success. This is a big difficulty in regard to Taiwan, because of the diplomatic situation. But you can develop informal procedures. For example, there is nothing to stop the government here using civil law procedures. You don't have to do it government to government. The Taiwan government could go and sue in the courts of another country as an ordinary litigant. And it's very useful to station MJIB officers overseas: I've benefited greatly by working with MJIB officers in South Africa. I think that's something that can be expanded.
I don't think there is any one panacea. You have to adopt an integrated strategy, and law enforcement is just one element in that. One has to start with education.
How can law enforcers improve their techniques?
Criminals on the whole are as clever as we are. Probably most of the successful ones are cleverer than us. They have far more money than we have; they have a big incentive to make more money and not get caught. Whatever one does, there will be a reaction. So you've got to be very flexible at changing your techniques all the time. Take the Internet and cyberspace, which are increasingly being used by drug dealers. If we can't get effective law enforcement in the physical world, how the devil are we going to get effective enforcement in cyberspace? Jurisdiction over cyberspace is urgent.
At the end of the day, there is nothing as good as a well-rounded undercover operation. But one has to realize the risks involved. When you are dealing with serious crime, you are dealing with very powerful people, and often they will have very good political contacts.
Very few policemen friends of mine have retired happy. I think this is true of good policemen all around the world. If they are good policemen, they will either retire frustrated, because they've been accused of corruption, having bent the rules to get results, or they w ill have been set up. When I was a diplomat, I kept on being suspended for saying what I thought. Now I keep on getting sued for what I say. Drugs and corruption are very close. If you're involved in a corruption case, you can be absolutely certain that you will be attacked yourself. People will say you are corrupt. You just have to accept it. One of the difficulties is that we don't really know the extent of organized crime or how much of a threat it really is.
Do you see any likelihood of an international anti-drug organization?
No, because everybody has got different interests, haven't they? A lot of your drugs come from the southeast coast of mainland China. Are they going to help you? I doubt it. If they're firing missiles at you, are they going to help you with your drug policy? I wouldn't have thought so. There are countries that deliberately produce drugs as part of their economic policy. You've got other governments that actually make a decision to launder narcotics money. Added t o that, you've got a complete breakdown of law and order in central-eastern Europe, where there are no police and no prosecutors. Look at what happened in Albania.
We also have to be sensitive to the concerns of other governments. The Americans have got to be far more sensitive to helping developing countries. The same goes for Britain as well. But even Americans have budgetary problems. Some people argue for legalizing drugs. I think it's a purely academic argument. When you are dealing with products that are dangerous to health, then society has a responsibility.
Taiwan has been barred from participating in international anti-drug programs. What's your reaction to this?
When you are dealing with serious crimes today, whether it be drug trafficking or economic crime, then almost by definition they are going to be international. Either the criminal is foreign, or Taiwanese base their operations in Hong Kong, or their money is out of the country. So international cooperation is vitally important.
That is why I must congratulate the MJIB for holding this conference. And indeed, the MJIB, probably more than any other law enforcement agency in the world, has been concerned to promote international cooperation. Your representatives and ambassadors have also done an excellent job.
Because of the political situation, Taiwan doesn't have many treaties. But frankly, treaties don't work anyway. Let's suppose I'm investigating a case in Singapore and I need cooperation from Australia. As a policeman, I first have to make out a case to put to the prosecutor. The prosecutor then goes to the foreign affairs ministry. The foreign affairs ministry then contacts the Australian foreign affairs ministry, which takes it to the justice department, and the justice department sends it to the police. That takes months. So treaties are too slow. Increasingly, what you need is regional enforcement agencies--the ability of law enforcement to move from one country to another.
In the Taiwan context, you have very good informal cooperation. I say this as someone who's been an investigator for over twenty years, mostly in this region. In practice, informal cooperation is far more important. That is why even though the American government has many treaties and many resources, it still focuses its attention on a few key countries. That is to develop informal cooperation. I can't think of a single drug agency in the world that would not deal with Taiwan informally. Policemen aren't politicians or diplomats. Policemen are concerned with taking damaging criminals out of circulation.
Obviously it would help if the situation with the mainland was regularized. But frankly, that's a long way down the road. I think the current situation is difficult for Taiwan, and that's why I'm here. That's why I'm ready to give Taiwan all the support I can. I host a big conference each year in Britain, and the Republic of China always plays a very significant role. We always have a large number of speakers from Tai wan. So I think it's a mistake to think that Taiwan is invisible in the international legal community.
The US International Narcotics Control Strategy Report listed Taiwan as a significant drug transit center. What's your opinion about that?
It is, inevitably. Taiwan occupies a key geographical position. The more Taiwan becomes significant as a financial center, the more likely it is that you are going to have organized crime here. If you are creating a major international port, as you have in Kaohsiung, you will get problems there because of the extensive containerization. Obviously, if you are setting up a major financial center in Taipei, then you will have the problem of money laundering. There would be something wrong with you if you didn't.
No one knows how much is going through the container ports. How can you check all the containers that come through Kaohsiung? And how can you check the fishing boats? You have got one of the biggest maritime police forces in the world, but how can you check?
Will Hong Kong's drug cartels move to Taiwan once the territory reverts to Chinese rule?
An awful lot of nonsense is spoken about Hong Kong. In Europe, a lot of people are worried about the triads leaving Hong Kong in July and all coming to Europe. But Hong Kong businessmen made their arrangements ten years ago. They weren't about to wait till July.
--interview by Anita Huang