How transnational mafia bosses became the new generals of hybrid warfare

International mafias have fully joined the power war game. According to Europol, the EU's police agency, traditional criminal activities have been weaponized by a teaming up of gangsters and “hostile state-actors such as Russia and Belarus” Europol officials say.

Catherine De Bolle, executive director of Europol, told Euronews:  

“Criminal organizations are agile, borderless and they work to destabilize. So criminal organizations always look for opportunities. If they see an opportunity to work with a state actor, they will work with a state actor, if it gives them something back, if it gives them money, if it gives them access to a digital or a cyber infrastructure from a state and they can then make use of this environment for their own profits."

The new Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment (SOCA) report points out that organised crime is no longer a nationally based and rooted entity, like the old mafias. It has, instead, become completely globalized thanks to new technologies and a cyber space that knows no borders.  

“We see cybercriminals working during the day in a criminal infrastructure for a state actor. And in the night, for instance, they carry out their actions (traditional criminal activities) on their own to get profit. So they work for foreign actors and they work for their own profit” says Catherine De Bolle.

According to Europol, transnational organized crime has de facto turned into a private military company of hybrid warfare, renting its services and illegal clandestine networks to state-actors.  Another relevant factor that is changing the geography of security threats against democracies is artificial intelligence which has become a fundamental arm of hybrid warfare and profoundly contributes to the change in the security landscape, erasing the separation between criminal activities and hostile operations.

Because of this war “we certainly have to look at the fact that organized crime in Russia and Ukraine will find new ways how to penetrate to European Union. They will be very knowledgeable about cyber. They will have a lot of weapons at their disposal. So the monitoring of this will be very important for the future” Catherine De Bolle explains.  

Crime and war: imminent threats to the EU

The threat is challenging to say the least, but the EU says that it is ready to take the necessary action. Magnus Brunner, EU commissioner for internal affairs, announced that the SOCA report will be submitted to EU governments in the European Council and that Europol's staff will be doubled in the years to come, with funding drastically increased. Although the EU Commission says that at the moment it has not been decided what amount of money will be needed.

In 2024, Europol’s budget amounted to more than 220 millions Euros.

One of the most concrete and visible acts of hostile hybrid warfare is the use of illegal immigration to destabilize the political landscape of the EU. It is also a prototypical case of the synergy between organized crime and state actors. Poland, for example, has been a major target and has experienced massive flows of illegal immigrants for years.

 “It’s clear that this is an artificially created migration because at our borders we have  people from Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq, Egypt, for example. Those migrants should come through the Mediterranean route” Maciej Duszczyk, Polish deputy-interior minister tells Euronews, adding that

“this is the modus operandi of the criminal gangs who cooperate very closely with the Belarusian and Russian government because without the engagement of the state actors from Belarus and and Russia, it would have been impossible to create these migration routes”.

Europol is also raising the alert about a potentially chaotic scenario in a post-war Ukraine, where a power vaccum could become the perfect environment for criminal activities.