draining development.pdf - Khazar University

Human Trafficking and International Financial Flows 193The activities linked to living beings imply that the smugglers mustmaintain contact with the people who are trafficked because these peoplemust be lodged and cared for. Given that they must establish this sortof connection with their clients, criminal organizations take measures toseparate manpower and money flows. Police raids and the arrest of prostitutesare almost inevitable; so, the criminal organization must protectits revenue by separating the merchandise (that is, the people) and themoney. The money paid by the client is thus usually passed on immediatelyto a local manager, who then promptly gives it to a collector.In contrast, organs are discretely removed in a poor country, whilethe purchasers usually live in rich countries. The transplantation may becarried out in a poor country with good medical infrastructure. Weknow little about this type of traffic. It is plausible that an organ removedin India, for example, might be transplanted into a Swiss patient who hastraveled to Romania for the purpose. In such a scenario, the flow ofmoney is particularly difficult to chart.Slavery requires different financial circuits. Most often, the individualis offered assistance in entering a host country and then, after the entry,is deprived of his papers. He must then work for a family or, more rarely,a company. 13 The migrant pays the criminal organization. Sometimes,the beneficiary of the labor also pays a fee. The flows are irregular unlessthe beneficiary wishes to change personnel.We know little about the laundering techniques used by the criminalorganizations involved in human trafficking. It is possible that theseorganizations have extremely large sums of money and launder themsuccessfully. It is also possible that they possess much more sophisticatedlaundering systems than anything we have seen in the domain of drugs(Zaitch 1998; Reuter and Truman 2004).The taxonomy of the flowsWe note above that the modes of circulation of the revenue flows createdby human trafficking are heterogeneous. It is thus almost impossible todistinguish the sums that correspond to the human trafficking segmentof the operations of criminal organizations from the sums that correspondto the pornographic industry, prostitution, or labor. Nonetheless,in table 6.1, we attempt to classify the various flows of money generatedby human trafficking according to the most significant characteristics.