Combatting International Crime: A Look Ahead

10:00am EST

     MR. ROSA: Good morning, everyone. It's great to be here on a morning like this and have the opportunity to be indoors and talking about what I consider -- and many of us consider -- to be a particularly important subject and an increasingly important subject, and that is the challenge that the United States and the world community face today from international crime.

     What I'd like to do with my portion of the initial remarks this morning is to give you a little bit of historical context and then a little bit of our perspective on the recently published international crime threat assessment that came out in December -- I'm sorry. Yeah, that's correct -- came out in December of 2000. The dates begin to run together as you talk about the different significant events in the evolution of what this government has done recently in this arena.

     The historical context I'd like to begin by pointing out that it was really in October of 1995 that the United States took a particularly significant step against international organized crime, through the issuance by then-President Clinton of a presidential decision directive that made it unequivocally clear that the United States regards international crime as a serious threat to the national security of the United States. That directive set in motion a number of intergovernmental initiatives, one of which was the publication in May of 1998 of the first-ever fully comprehensive international crime- control strategy, a document which essentially has been guiding the efforts of the United States over the span of the last several years in attempting to curtail these various types of international crime activity.

     And I might at this juncture, just to be sure that we are on the same wavelength in terms of understanding how it is that we are using the term "international crime," offer the following as the kinds of activities that typically we are considering within that particular rubric.

     Probably the one that is most widely noted and discussed is drug trafficking. Its competitor, on the other hand, probably, for that dubious distinction could very well be terrorism.

     Other types of international crime activity that are certainly within the purview of the strategy and the subsequent threat assessment include money laundering, alien smuggling, trafficking in persons, intellectual property theft, counterfeiting, international fraud and various activities of that particular nature. If I didn't mention arms trafficking, a particularly important one, that, of course, is included within that rubric.

     Now, that international crime control strategy introduced a further series of initiatives in May of 1998 in setting forth a broad strategy for the United States government. One of those was the preparation of the first-ever fully comprehensive drawing on all sources' -- law enforcement community sources, intelligence community sources and open sources available throughout the world -- assessment of the nature, the scope and the magnitude of international crime. And it is the result of that particular long-term, multi-year effort that was first released to the public in December of 2000.

     Now, essentially what is it when you look at that particular document that underlies its significance? And do we currently serving in government look at that document and think about it in terms of the future? Well, I think the fundamental conclusion of that document is that the international crime threat is today a complex, growing and particularly grave crisis that confronts not only the United States and our society, but the global community.

     And what has essentially happened is that in the period of time between the end of the Cold War -- and here, of course, we have to note that international crime as a phenomenon is not new, it is millennia old -- but what has happened in the post-Cold War period is that there has been a spread and an evolution in international crime that has significantly increased the concern that we attach to it and underlies the reason why the United States, and increasingly other governments, have defined international crime generally or particular aspects of it as a threat to their national security.

     And of course, this particular phenomenon since the end of the Cold War has been driven by the same force of globalization that has brought so many positives into the picture. The sort of dark side of globalization has been spurred by the more open borders that we have seen, the tremendous advances in communications and travel technologies, and the opening of world markets. All of those have created new opportunities, provided new technologies for use and exploitation by international crime groups.

     Now, in terms of just giving you some of the flavor of the document, I think that you have copies of it and it is certainly available on the Web, you have probably done at least some homework prior to coming to the session, but I think that some of what is in the document that I would offer as particularly significant would focus on areas that at least here in U.S. society we haven't tended to focus on as much -- the drug trafficking, the terrorism issues. They tend to be much better documented and understood. But it is not particularly well understood by American society generally that intellectual property theft is a particularly strong and increasing concern for the United States.

     If you look at the global economy from a U.S. perspective, our number one export sector is copyrighted products. And if you look at the various estimates that we have -- and they're only estimates -- in 1998, for example, we estimate that American interests lost some $12.4 billion to intellectual property theft worldwide.

     That same year we find that if you just simply look for an illustrative statistic, one of every three of the musical CDs sold around the world were, in fact, counterfeit CDs. Now, I'd emphasize the point that is not particularly well known and is of particular importance nonetheless to American society, but I think that it is also generally true to societies around the globe. Most societies today are either on the verge of or well along their way toward an orientation where there is more in the way of a service and an intellectual property component to their society.

     Another area less well-known, and the only other one I'll illustrate, is that the problem of alien smuggling and the related problem of trafficking in persons is also one that while increasingly focused on, is still not that well-understood; it is not that well- appreciated by U.S. society and I think by other societies as well.

     Let's just differentiate the two for a moment. When we think of alien smuggling or migrant smuggling, we're thinking of a criminal act which involves a criminal enterprise that is moving individuals, who are undocumented or otherwise illegal, across a national border. Trafficking in persons, which at times has some similar elements, is a distinct problem and involves the exploitation of individuals, often for sexual purposes, and it is a crime activity that may happen entirely within the geographic limits of a particular country, or it may involve crossing international borders. Let me just offer a statistical estimate to give you an order of the magnitude for those two problems.

     Looking at it from a United States perspective, we estimate that on the order of 2 million individuals are apprehended each year attempting to enter the United States illegally. Most, but not all of those, are assisted by a criminal group. It may be a small criminal enterprise, or it may be a larger one. Approximately 500,000 individuals are able to enter the United States illegally each year. And, of course, there are a number of ramifications associated with those various illegal entries.

     If you turn for a moment to the trafficking in persons problem, our estimates -- and they're only estimates; they're the best that we could come up with, but they remain estimates -- are that some 700,000, at least -- there are estimates out there we're not quite willing to accept that take this number as high as 2 million -- individuals, mostly women and children, were transported across national boundaries on a global basis for some kind of exploitation, typically sexual, in 1997. There are also labor-related aspects, in addition to the sexual exploitation. And of that number, looking at it from a U.S. perspective, we estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of 45,000 to 50,000 of those persons -- again, primarily women and children -- are in fact smuggled into the United States each year.

     I'd like to just wrap up this initial set of opening remarks by giving you a sense for the future and how we look at the International Crime Threat Assessment, having published it.

     For us it was a very systematic, a very rigorous look at the problem that gave us a much better appreciation than we had previously for its nature, for its magnitude, and for its impacts on U.S. citizens and U.S. national security interests.

     What we are about now in U.S. government -- and we would certainly commend this approach to other governments as well -- is we are using that threat assessment as a basis for taking a very careful look at our strategy; for determining whether our existing strategy is sound or whether it needs to be substantially or at least somewhat modified now that we've got the thorough threat assessment, and then, in a derivative fashion, to look at our various programs -- our unilateral programs and our cooperative programs with other governments -- to determine whether they are adequately addressing this particular threat.

     Thank you very much.

     MR. BEERS: Thank you, Fred.

     I'd like to just talk very briefly about four different activities that the United States is involved in, or directly taking responsibility for.

     The first is a Financial Action Task Force which is now over 10 years old but, more to the point, has recently -- last June to be specific -- come through a very comprehensive review of the banking regulations of a number of countries around the world and, based on 25 criteria, come to some judgments about 18 of them and basically labeled them as "noncooperative jurisdictions or territories."

     This is an effort to try to take, on a global basis, the money laundering activities of criminal organizations and create a global environment in which there are no safe havens for illegal or ill- gotten gains. This process will continue. There will be another listing of another group of countries this coming June. There will be some results of success with respect to the countries who were -- or territories who were labeled "noncooperative" as they have responded to try to bring their regulatory regimes in line with the guidelines of the Financial Action Task Force.

     I think this is a very significant indication of the multilateral community coming together to deal with a significant organized crime problem and to come up with multilateral solutions in order to move all countries into a common set of guidelines and regulations in order to ensure that there are no safe havens.

     Secondly, in December of this year in Palermo, Italy, the U.N. came together for the signing of the Transnational Organized Crime Convention -- 124 countries signed that document. It is basically a document which takes off from where the 1988 Vienna Convention on Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances left off in terms of setting guidelines, both for what are criminal acts and what cooperation is necessary in the area of transnational organized crime.

     It focused specifically, at the end, in two protocols -- one on migrant smuggling and the other on trafficking in persons; in the need for specific cooperative measures among states in that regard, including the need for the developed world to provide technical assistance to the developing world in order that the criminal laws and procedures can be harmonized on a global basis.

     In relation to that and in response to that, the United States, over the last year and then finally announced in December, has decided first of all to organize a Coordination Center for Migrant Smuggling and Trafficking in Persons. To go back to Fred's remarks earlier, this is an effort to bring together for the U.S. but also for dissemination to other countries all of the information that we have about migrant smuggling and trafficking rings around the world in order to allow law enforcement agencies around the world to be able to respond to the activities of these illegal groups.

     Secondly, as a result of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, which was passed by our Congress, the State Department will also be setting up an office to look specifically at the policy issues related both to trafficking and the victims of trafficking. These two offices represent a response both to the situation and concern, situation within and concerns of the United States. But they are also directly responsive to our desire to be as forward-leaning as possible in response to the Transnational Organized Crime Convention.

     Let me leave you with those several initiatives and let Bruce speak.

     MR. SWARTZ: Thank you, Rand.

     Over the past decade the United States Department of Justice has increasingly had to confront the problem of crime without borders. It is, of course, something that we have all encountered in all of our countries. An individual sitting in one country can now, using a computer, unleash a virus that will affect industries and home computers throughout the world. Someone sitting in another country can engage in financial fraud using more traditional forms of telecommunications. And as my colleagues have suggested, organized crime groups in one country can engage in activities that will have implications for countries throughout the world.

     In responding, the United States Department of Justice has recognized that the only way that we can deal with the transnational organized and unorganized crime threat is through cooperation, cooperation both within the United States government and cooperation with our international law enforcement partners. And that cooperation has really spanned three different areas.

     The Department of Justice has in essence the lead prosecutorial role for federal crimes within the United States. But those federal crimes, as I have suggested and my colleagues have suggested, are increasingly no longer local crimes alone. And engaging in the first of our responsibilities, prosecution and investigation, we've had to work -- not only work closely with our law enforcement partners, including the Department of the Treasury, the Department of State -- within the United States, but increasingly with foreign law enforcement agencies. We've encountered again and again the importance of establishing cooperative relationships, relationships that allow us to work together on particular criminal problems.

     The second aspect in which the Department of Justice has addressed international crime has been the establishment of a web of international agreements, again in cooperation with our Department of State, to deal with the problem of mutual legal assistance and extradition. Over the past decade in particular, we've engaged in a very extensive attempt to ensure that criminals do not have safe havens, either for the evidence that is necessary to convict them or for their actual persons.

     And we've done that through treaties that establish sharing of evidence as a common practice. It's something that simplifies the much more complex procedures that were typical of an age when communications were slower, and we've done it through extradition treaties that ensure a more modern approaching to extraditing individuals to the states in which they have committed crimes.

     And where extradition is not possible, we have tried to work, particularly through a number of multilateral organizations, including the G-8, to establish sets of principles that would help us more easily prosecute individuals that can't be extradited, including principles regarding such techniques as video conferencing of live- witness testimony for trials.

     And finally, the third way in which the Department of Justice, again, with other entities within the United States government has attempted to address international crime, is through cooperation on rule of law, training in programs and technical assistance programs. With funding provided by the State Department and other sources, the Department of Justice, through its law enforcement entities, including the FBI and the DEA and through prosecutorial training programs that are sponsored by the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, has worked extensively with foreign countries to train on issues ranging from forensics to law enforcement techniques to more general rule-of- law issues; that is, corruption issues, how one establishes an effective judiciary.

     And again, it should be stressed that in this area, as in the two previous areas, this is very much a two-way street with our foreign law enforcement partners. Because of the relationships that are developed between and among the law enforcement agencies and because of the techniques that the United States learns, it cannot be said that this is simply an instance in which the United States is taking the lead. This is very much a matter and a cause in which all of the countries of the world have a great interest in working together.

     Thank you.

     MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take your questions. We have just one microphone today, so please do wait for that to reach you before identifying yourself and your organization.

     Questions?

     Q Hi. Andrei Sitov from TASS, from the Russian News Agency. First of all, thank you for arranging this briefing. One doesn't know where to begin with you guys. (Laughs.) But to take a famous case, a recent famous case with Mr. Borodin, we now have accepted the rationale that this is a legal issue. I was interested in your comments, maybe from the Department of Justice primarily, on how it compares to the case of the fugitive financier, Mr. Rich -- (laughter) -- and has the United States ever asked Switzerland to extradite Mr. Rich, and what was the response, if it did? And why it didn't, if it didn't.

     MR. SWARTZ: I think this is a question that the State Department should handle, rather than the Department of Justice. (Laughter.) But I -- I can say that, again, I think this goes to the question of the nature of extradition treaties and the changes in extradition treaties over the past decade.

     As I'm sure you're aware, extradition treaties frequently in the past were seen not to cover fiscal offenses, sometimes mutual legal assistance treaties, in the same way. So that I think it's fair to say that with regard to the Rich case, the position taken, as I understand it, was that extradition would not be possible under the then-existing extradition arrangements between the United States and Switzerland.

     Q But, can you comment, sir, on -- in terms of how they compare, what's different? Financial -- one guy is suspected of laundering some money in Switzerland. The other guy is -- what? -- tax evasion, mostly; fraud.

     Are those different under American law in terms of how extraditable they are?

     MR. SWARTZ: The question is not United States law but the extradition treaty. And the treaties sometimes do distinguish between tax offenses as opposed to other financial crimes. And my understanding is that the treaty in question, that is the Swiss-United States Treaty at the time, involving the time that was relevant to Mr. Rich, was, at least in the position taken aboard, was not one that covered tax offenses, as opposed to other financial crimes.

     Q That's why you didn't even ask for him to be extradited?

     MR. SWARTZ: No, I did not suggest that. Simply that it is my understanding that that is the position of those who interpreted the treaty at the time.

     Q Would you gentlemen variously expand your remarks upon the Palermo Convention, the recent signing of it? When you do anticipate that it may be ratified in the United States? Could you address criticism from some parties that it doesn't go far enough, it doesn't have sanctions for countries that do not live up to their commitments; the criticism that with 124 countries signing on board, some are doing it with simply a kind of a wink and a nod; in many of these countries there really is no larger respect for rule of law. We're hearing all of those things, if you gentlemen could -

     MODERATOR: Could you identify yourself?

     Q I'm sorry. Charlene Porter (sp) with the Washington File.

     MR. ROSA: As a matter of practice, the creation of international conventions with respect to norm setting, as this particular convention is intended, have traditionally simply set the basis for cooperation and have not engaged in sanctions with respect to the non- compliance of states. That's the first point.

     The second point is that this is intended very specifically to create the basis of cooperation, but it will require the efforts on the part of member states, or some subset of all member states, to take initiative in order to pursue the kinds of activities that are suggested. The partners in the G-8 group of nations have discussed this convention in their regular law enforcement meetings, and it is their intention to act at least as one group of countries that will seek to expand upon this basis of cooperation. But you're certainly right that every signature doesn't necessarily mean automatic compliance with all of the suggested activities involved.

     With respect to the United States, our ratification process requires that these kinds of documents be examined by our legal community, the Office of the Legal Adviser in the State Department, and also by officials of the Justice Department, to do a thorough review of that process, which would then be made available as part of the request for ratification, going to the Senate of the United States, which is our ratification body.

     That process is currently ongoing. I expect it to be completed probably by the end of this month, and then the State Department will undertake further consultations on the Hill and submit the document for ratification, which I assume will be during the course of the current session of Congress.

     I'm sorry; I cannot give you a prediction on how long the actual ratification process is going to take, because we have only had preliminary consultations with the Hill.

     During the negotiation of this protocol, of this treaty -- convention, I should say -- we had consultations with the Hill. There were no indications of any problems. But we did not have a final text, and that is, after all, what the Senate will be asked to ratify. So until we can go up with a full legal analysis and sit down and talk with them in detail, it's hard to gauge whether or not this is going to take a long time or whether it's going to be a rather rapid ratification.

     Q But -- (off mike) -- it will go -- I mean, that the State Department isn't sending it to the Hill this session; that's -- you're pretty certain --

     MR. : (Off mike.)

     Q Okay.

     MODERATOR: Yes?

     Q Jesus Esquivel from the Mexican News Agency. This is for Mr. Beers. President Bush is going to Mexico to meet President Fox this Friday. I have two questions for you.

     First, what is your opinion to the idea of some senators to suspend for two years the process of drug certification? They say they can -- without the certification, they can get more cooperation from countries, like Mexico, who openly reject the idea to be certified by your country.

     And the second question -- it's regarding an investigation that so far has been kept in secret. Probably you remember in 1999, during the meeting of the contact group of high level between Mexico and the United States, an incident in Matamoros, when an FBI agent and a DEA agent were involved with narco-traffickers. They were threatened -- their lives -- by narco-traffickers in Matamoros. And at that time Attorney General Janet Reno said they were in the process to investigate and to get information from the Mexican government about it, because there was an argument that police from the state and federal police were involved in the incident. My question is, two years after that, what was the answer of the Mexican government to that particular incident?

     MR. BEERS: With respect to the issue of certification, it has been a discussion point between the government of Mexico and the government of the United States, as you are well aware, for some time, including most recently, when Foreign Secretary Castaneda came to the State Department to visit with Secretary Powell in advance of the president's trip on Friday.

     There is not at this point in time a position of the U.S. government executive branch with respect to the legislative proposal.

     We are in the process of examining it. We are in the process of discussing it with members of Congress and we have discussed it with the Mexican foreign secretary. And I would suspect that it will be a topic of discussion between the two presidents. But at this particular point in time, we're not in a position to comment officially on that piece of draft legislation. We are always interested in finding the best possible ways to enhance our drug cooperation, and we have certainly heard from our partners in this hemisphere and elsewhere, and from Mexico, in particular, of their concerns regarding certification. And that is certainly part of the deliberation within the administration. But I have no official position to give you in that regard.

     On the issue of the information requested and whether it was received from the government of Mexico, I'm not aware of that, and my colleague here indicates that he's not aware that we have received a final piece of a report from the government of Mexico on that particular incident. So I'm afraid I can't give you anything on that.

     Q (Off mike.)

     MR. BEERS: It's not a closed matter, as far as I'm concerned.

     Q Carlos Hammond (sp) with Agence France Presse. Is there any way to quantify the budget that the United States dedicates towards -- (inaudible) -- international crime, crime threats?

     (Pause.)

     MR. ROSA: As you can tell from our quick deliberations after your question, that is indeed a difficult question. What I can do is give you some order of magnitude information which is relevant to your question, but you won't find it fully satisfactory because fundamentally that's very, very difficult for us to quantify. And let me just explain why.

     First of all, as I indicated at the outset, international crime increasingly covers a tremendous range of criminal activity. Correspondingly, we have a very significant number, dozens, of U.S. government agencies who have direct or indirect roles with respect to our international crime problems, our international crime challenges. And then from the standpoint of those who look at the world through green eyeshades, it gets very difficult to decide, when you have an organized crime group that may be centered in a certain other country in this hemisphere but has operations in a number of other countries, including the United States, and you have FBI agents in Memphis that are investigating a distribution chain for illegal drugs, ought we to count that for international crime in terms of coming up with some accounting?

     Now, having explained the challenge of it, I'll offer the following. If you look at the entire U.S. government drug budget, that's to support a comprehensive and balanced strategy involving demand-reduction elements and supply-reduction elements, encompassing research, education, et cetera, you're generally in the realm of about $18 billion per year.

     Q (Off mike.)

     MR. ROSA: Of that, two-thirds goes to various types of enforcement, some of which has an international orientation, much of which has a domestic, a --if you will -- "safe streets" aspect here for the United States.

     Beyond that, we clearly spend an additional several billion dollars each year in various international crime programs that we can easily carve out. For example, we can look at what our Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is doing against the arms trafficking threat. We can identify the agents, the programs, et cetera, and we can carve that out, and when we pull that into a figure, you're going to get an additional several billion dollars. But we don't have a confident figure for the total expenditure. It is, indeed, considerable.

     I'd like to go back to an earlier question, just while I have a moment, the question focused on the Transnational Organized Crime Convention that was signed in Palermo just recently. And I'd just like to supplement what my colleague, Assistant Secretary Beers, has offered, by asking those of you particularly who are familiar with this subject area to reflect back on the years leading up to the adoption of the 1988 U.N. Drug Convention. I followed that very closely and was involved to a minor extent at the time, and I can attest to the fact that that was a monumental undertaking, and there were many who said, "This convention will never happen in any form that will have meaningful impact."

     Let's fast-forward to the year 2001, some 13 years later. And I can attest from personal experience, both in the field and in policy circles, to the effect that that convention has made a significant difference. There are types of cooperation and there are successes that have happened in combatting the illegal drug trade worldwide that, quite simply, would not have happened if there wasn't that framework; if it wasn't the case that we could go to a foreign government, perhaps one that we don't work with regularly, and say we have this common problem; we propose this course of action, and we would like to remind you, if you have perhaps not spent time recently focusing on the 1988 convention, that there is a solid basis in international law for what we're proposing.

     So I would expect -- and I'm ever the optimist -- that the Transnational Organized Crime Convention, some number of years hence, will prove similarly effective, and that's why we place tremendous emphasis on it.

     Q I have so many questions. Mr. Beers, you mentioned that in June there will be a new update for the FATF list. Unfortunately, my country is on the first list as a noncompliant state. So I guess my question to you, sir, is are you aware of any progress being made by the Russian government in fulfilling the obligations, and what are the prospects of Russia being taken off that list?

     Thank you.

     MR. BEERS: It is my understanding that the government of Russia has moved forward with some money laundering legislation which had been stalled, I think is the best word to put on it, prior to this and that it has made representations to the Financial Action Task Force regarding that effort on the government's part and that FATF is in the process of deliberating now and will be in discussions with the government of Russia about that progress and whether or not additional progress is necessary. But I can't tell you specifically whether or not Russia or any other country will be taken off of the list in June. But that's the time frame in which the decision will be made.

     Q Maria Arona (sp) from La Nacion from Argentina. The report mentions the diversification of the organized crime in South America especially. I was wondering about money laundering, which is now a major case of scandal in Argentina because of an investigation going on in the Congress. I was wondering whether you are in any way or have in any way aware of new patterns of major money laundering going on in South -- or in countries in southern America and how well are or they're not prepared for that, and especially Argentina?

     (Off mike conversation.)

     MR. BEERS: I don't have anything specific for you on Argentina, although I would call your attention to the report because I can't tell you specifically what words it says about Argentina. So you should also look at the report to see specifically what that said. But what I can tell you in general is that over the course, really, of the last 15 years -- and the point that I made first in my opening remarks are representative of that -- as we, the nations of the world, began to focus on the drug trade and its insidious effects on all of our countries, we came to realize that, not surprisingly, drug traffickers engaged in drug trafficking because it was a very profitable activity. And -- (audio drops for 8 seconds).

     (Continues) -- they had to do something with the ill-gotten gains that they had. By and large, at least in the United States, the transaction is in cash; you don't find people buying drugs on credit cards. And therefore you have to turn the money into something else. As we have pursued this -- and when I say "we" again, I mean all nations of the world -- we have come to realize more and more that all manner of crimes in which cash is the commodity of transaction are being moved into other forms of money that are more legally viewed, and that it is the responsibility of government and nations of the world collectively to try to prevent this kind of activity.

     So is it new, or have we just found it for the first time? And I think it's more the latter than the former. I'm not saying that international organized crime isn't getting worse, but I would also say that it is absolutely true that money laundering has been going on for years and years. And what we are doing now is discovering how much there is actually out there and trying to find ways to deal with it.

     But I don't have -- you know, I can't tell you that it's specifically gotten worse in Latin America or Argentina, as opposed to that we are now aware of the magnitude of the problem on a global basis and a regional basis and on a country basis, including the United States.

     Q I'm Jane Morris (sp) with the Washington File. I have a question for Mr. Rosa.

     Is international crime largely dominated by organized crime? And I'm thinking specifically in the case of Chinese alien smuggling, which certain scholars at Rutgers University and elsewhere seem to think is pretty much an entrepreneurial advocation and not dominated by organized crime.

     Does this make it harder or easier for U.S. government and other governments to deal with? And also, is the U.S. thinking about increasing penalties for human smuggling?

     MR. ROSA: I think that the answer to your question, at least in part, depends on what definition you would decide to adopt for organized crime activity. Generally speaking, when the term is used, I think most of us who use it have an implicit adjective or qualifier there, and it's the word "significant." We're thinking in terms of major organizations. And if you adopt that definition, then you're absolutely correct that a "significant" number of those who are smuggled, not just into the United States, but elsewhere -- because this is not just a U.S. problem; if you -- and this is a bit of a tangent -- but if you talk right now to Western European law enforcement officials, and ask them -- big picture -- what are their leading concerns, you'll find that they'll mention concerns that have been there for a long time, and they will increasingly add alien smuggling -- illegal migrations generally -- to that list.

     But, in terms of the alien smuggling problem, if you're thinking of it in terms of major organizations as opposed to smaller ones, there are many entrepreneurial small groups that smuggle. And yes, it does make it more difficult. I mean, clearly, from an investigatory standpoint, smaller organizations, many of which are family-based, are much more difficult to penetrate, and they are also, in many instances, not the logical targets of various law enforcement officials with broad responsibilities that are in a position of having to prioritize resources. So, all of that is, of course, a concern.

     Specifically, with respect to the penalties for alien smuggling, we, in fact, are always looking at our criminal sanctions; our civil sanctions system. And that is an effort that we're encouraging, particularly abroad. We do it here as a matter of course, but today, under U.S. law, there are significant penalties associated. The question can be asked, "Should they be more severe?" -- or, "Should they be organized differently?" But when you move outside the United States, what you have today, unfortunately, is that in many countries, trafficking in persons, or alien smuggling are either not an offense at all, unless there is some associated significant violence -- a personal assault or what have you -- or if they are an offense, it is an offense that carries with it very minor penalties.

     And in fact, if you talk to investigators who follow up in terms of contributing to our strategic understanding of certain problems and you ask them what those who have been caught alien smuggling, trafficking in persons, have to say about their choices, they will sometimes say it makes much more sense for me to traffic in persons than to traffic in drugs because the penalties are so much more severe. And that's particularly true in some countries away from the United States.

     MR. SWARTZ: Just one other additional point. That was one of the bases of the protocol, was to get this particular problem criminalized, and criminalized at a level of significance, five years or more, so that we didn't have this particular problem that Fred is remarking on.

     MODERATOR: We have time for one or two more questions.

     Q Slobodan Palovic (sp). I'm with Southeast Europe News Service. One of the hot topics in European media are the accusations that Italian Mafia is using the facilities in the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro as a transit point for smuggling the American cigarettes to European market. Even the Italian finance minister recently accused the Montenegrin government for the cooperation with these illegal activities. Do you have anything about that?

     And could you tell me, what is the level of your cooperation with the European Union and the Italian government in efforts to stop these illegal activities?

     MR. SWARTZ: I can certainly state that our cooperation with regard to the EU on this and on other matters has been close. Recently, two weeks ago, the United States met in Sweden with the Swedish presidency in connection with the European Union's transatlantic dialogue on justice and home affairs issues. And we have committed, and the EU has committed, to trying to establish as many possible avenues of cooperation, and this is certainly one area of which we are aware and in which we can say that cooperation is ongoing.

     Q (Off mike) -- regarding Montenegro?

     MR. SWARTZ: I wouldn't want to comment specifically on any particular matter, other than to say that cigarette smuggling is an issue that the United States and the European Union are aware of and have consulted on.

     MODERATOR: Last question, here.

     Q (Name inaudible) -- Romanian Radio. You mentioned the broad range of problems and broad range of steps taken by the United States. One of them was to initiate and participate to the Southeast European Cooperation Initiative. Do you think it is working good enough? And could its role improving in the future?

     MR. BEERS: We have an ongoing relationship with that organization. It is still in its early period. But we definitely see it as a very promising development that we want to continue to work with. And we will devote resources and individuals on a regular basis, including a recent meeting which we held in Bucharest involving representatives from countries in the region and U.S. regional legal attaches, all of whom met there in order to discuss how we can further cooperation across a range of crimes, and with some specific focus on trafficking in persons.

     So, yes, we think it's an excellent step forward, and want to continue to work with them.

     MODERATOR: Before I thank the gentlemen, I'll take the prerogative of a question from the podium. Is the report available online?

     MR. ROSA: I'm hesitating only because I know that it was available online. I haven't checked it recently. It was on the White House website, and I think it's elsewhere as well. Someone in the audience is actually nodding affirmatively. They may know better than we do.

     MODERATOR: We'll link it to our home page, so stay tuned.

     Thank you very much for an excellent and comprehensive briefing.

END.

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