Corruption is the more sophisticated way. The bigger the criminal volume as part of the legal economy, the greater the criminal involvement in legal business. And when officials are aware of that involvement, or ought to be, there is by definition a case of corruption. When the criminal volume increases, corruption will increase out of all proportions. Public officials, especially police and customs officers, are the target of corruption.
Corruption has to be recognised as the first serious menace to Western democracies.
In the first three months of 1988 the Dutch police performed an analysis on all the information available on organized crime. The just then trained crime annalists of the 23 police-regions analyzed the information on the regional level. The next step was to put that information together, in order to eliminate the doubles. The result of this exercise under the expert guidance of the police of Amsterdam numbered up to some 2 O criminal groups, with the most important concentration in the region of Amsterdam and in the region of Eindhoven. It should be noticed that many of these international connections reach only over a rather short distance across the national borders.