Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5 * Part 6 (Notes)
The trafficking in untaxed cigarettes is a profitable business
down to the street level. The profit margin for street vendors,
according to various sources, ranges from 2 to 10 Deutsche Marks
per carton of 200 cigarettes. One street vendor interviewed by
a journalist in 1995 reported that at lucrative spots up to 600
cartons could be sold in a single day for a profit of 2 to 4 Marks
each while less attractive vending places were still good for
selling 10 to 20, sometimes 100 cartons a day(52). This would
amount to monthly earnings from several hundred to several thousand
Deutsche Marks.
The profitability of the business combined with its visibility
and illegality make street vendors of untaxed cigarettes a likely
target for predatory criminals. In fact, early on Vietnamese street
vendors have been victimized in two distinct ways. On the one
hand they were targeted by right-wing-extremist juveniles, on
the other hand they became victims of Vietnamese extortionists.
In the early 1990s, Vietnamese street vendors were frequently
assaulted by young Germans(53), partly to rob cigarettes and money,
partly to take the law into their own hands, but mostly for racist
motives(54). These attacks were one expression of a broad wave
of xenophobic violence Germany, and especially East Germany, experienced
in the years following reunification(55). Vietnamese in general,
as the largest group of foreigners in East Germany, and not only
vendors of cigarettes, were primary targets of these racist assaults.
Towards the mid 1990s the wave of violence against Vietnamese
ebbed away. For 1996 a Berlin based Vietnamese self-help group
reported only some 20 incidents compared with around 1,000 assaults
during 1992(56), while at the same time internal violence of increasing
proportions and brutality took hold of the Vietnamese community.
Between June of 1991 and the End of 1992, the Berlin police, for
example, registered 28 cases of brutal robberies among Vietnamese(57).
In December of that same year the first of a series of homocides
occurred in the city(58). In 1993 the number of homocides within
the Vietnamese community in Berlin rose to 3 and then doubled
in each of the following two years to 6 in 1994 and 12 in 1995
to reach a high in 1996 with 15 homocides related in one way or
the other to the cigarette business(59). In other parts of East
Germany a similar development could be observed(60). At first
the violence was largely attributed to competition between cigarette
dealers(61), but soon the notion prevailed that the rivaling parties
were actually extortion gangs who fought over territories in which
they extracted protection payments from street vendors.
The beginnings of the Vietnamese extortion gangs are blurred.
According to one source, their origins date back to early 1990
when contract laborers from the poor central Vietnamese provinces
organized in an "Association of the Benefactors" for
protection against North Vietnamese who tried to hold on to the
privileges they had enjoyed in East Germany as the sons of functionaries
of the Hanoi regime(62). The North Vietnamese formed the "Association
of the Unified Military Provinces" and began to systematically
rob and extort Central Vietnamese cigarette vendors. In the ensuing
conflict the North Vietnamese were eventually driven out of the
Berlin area into southern regions of East Germany (Saxony and
Thuringia)(63), but not before they had succeeded in killing the
leader of the "Benefactors" in April of 1993. After
the death of its leader the "Association of the Benefactors"
fell apart and split into several smaller groups, formed along
regional lines who turned to extorting those they had once set
out to protect(64). Street vendors could no longer operate without
paying some sort of tribute to extortion gangs. In the following
years two major factions among the Central Vietnamese evolved
with about 50 strong-arm men on each side. At the hight of its
power in 1996, the largest of the two factions under the leadership
of a 25 year old supposedly controlled 800 of the 1,200 vending
places in Berlin(65).
The conflict between the rivaling factions culminated in a virtual
gangland war in late 1995 and early 1996. Just before Christmas
on a weekday afternoon one Vietnamese was killed and two seriously
injured in a shoot out on a busy street in East Berlin. Stray
bullets grazed a passer-by and hit two passing cars(66). In May
of 1996 the war reached its climax when six Vietnamese, known
to the police as vendors of untaxed cigarettes, were shot to death
in an East Berlin apartment. As investigators found out later,
the killers had tried to learn the whereabouts of a gang leader
to take revenge for the murder of one of their own vendors three
days earlier. In retaliation for the mass murder three vendors
aligned with the opposing faction were killed execution style
two days later(67).
The escalation of violence provoked dramatically intensified law
enforcement efforts. Already in 1994 a special unit had been formed
by the Berlin police to centralize all investigations involving
Vietnamese criminals. In April of 1996 the unit was reinforced
by a homocide squad and given almost unlimited access to personal
and logistic ressources enabling them to organize a more relentless
pursuit of street vendors and a more intense surveillance of the
behind-the-scenes movements of gang members. As a consequence
Vietnamese criminals were forced to adopt more conspiratorial
methods to conduct their businesses if they were not forced out
of business altogether. At the same time the police succeeded
in winning the trust of potential witnesses. Several Vietnamese
came forward to testify against murder suspects. By the end of
1996 the leaders of the two dominating gangs and several top members
were arrested. In the summer of 1997, after another six gang members
had been captured, the special police unit targeting Vietnamese
criminals was disbanded(68).
Today several smaller groups of hardly more than 10 members each
are believed to extort the remaining street vendors. Violent conflicts
have flared up occasionally, causing the police in February of
1998 to reinstitute a detective unit charged with monitoring the
Vietnamese underworld. But no gang appears to be strong enough
to gain a position comparable to that of the large gangs dominating
in the mid 1990s(69).
The gangs involved in the extortion of cigarette vendors do not
themselves participate in the trafficking of untaxed cigarettes,
except for allocating selling spots within their respective territories.
Whoever wishes to become a vendor has to contact the local gang
to negotiate a monthly "tax" to be paid in exchange
for the right to sell cigarettes provided by a third party. The
amount of money charged depends on the profitability of the location
and may range from several hundred up to several thousand Deutsche
Marks(70). The gangs usually appear on the scene only to collect
the monthly payments(71).
In most publications the structure of the extortion gangs is described
in the terminology typically applied to ethnically defined organized
criminal groups. They are said to be "tightly," "hierarchically,"
and "military like" organized. The police differentiates
four hierarchical levels, the gang leader at the top who directs
several so-called sub-leaders. They in turn command a number of
"soldiers" among which especially trusted "elevated
soldiers" stand out(72).(Slide: The Structure of Extortion) Additional functions are performed
by service providers and middlemen who are not regarded as gang
members. They assist gang members in matters like procuring legal
documents, housing or transportation. With regard to the sale
of untaxed cigarettes gangs apparently use individuals who are
themselves vendors to collect extortion payments from the vendors
in a particular area(73).
According to one source, some of the dominating gangs of the mid
1990s were functionally departmentalized insofar as sub-leaders
and their respective underlings were charged with carrying out
certain duties, for example as enforcers or internal security
officers. Larger gangs in general seem to have been at least geographically
departmentalized in the sense that certain soldiers were assigned
to control certain vending places(74).
Extortion gangs are exclusively of male membership. Women only
play a role as the lover of a boss(75). The cohesion among gang
members is supposedly based on regional affiliation, that is the
mutual origin from a village, city or province, not on family
ties(76). Violence apparently also plays a role in maintaining
internal discipline, as authorities believe some of the violence
of recent years to be acts of retaliation against traitors(77).
Many questions about the internal structure of extortion gangs
remain unanswered. For example, it is not clear how gangs recruit
new members, what requirements prospective members have to meet
and through what kind of initiation procedure they have to go
through.
Organized Crime Research (kvl-homepage)
The Nicotine Racket. Trafficking in Untaxed Cigarettes: A Case Study of Organized Crime in Germany, by Klaus von Lampe
