THREE-thousand drug dealers, money launderers, counterfeiters and other gangsters are at large in Scotland, a "mapping" investigation has revealed.
Almost 250 crooked lawyers, accountants and other "specialists" give criminals professional help, it shows.
The most complete picture of organised crime ever produced by police revealed 367 serious crime groups are active in Scotland – involving
4,066 people.
Senior officers yesterday revealed that about three-quarters of those operate in the country, with the remainder in custody or operating elsewhere in the UK or overseas.
Police unveiled the results of the year-long probe into the scale and extent of serious organised crime in Scotland, revealing that they had identified a hit list of the 20 most dangerous groups operating in the country.
The investigation has also disclosed that 202 of 367 serious organised crime groups in Scotland have access to guns.
The mapping project, led by Gordon Meldrum, the director-general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), will trigger a national crackdown on organised crime. Information gathered from the mapping project will be shared with front-line officers, who will carry out targeted searches in an effort to dismantle the groups.
A new background checks system will be set up to ensure public contracts for security, taxis, buses and other services will no longer be handed to fronts for crime gangs.
As part of the assault on organised crime, the Scottish Government announced a £4 million package to pay for 80 new posts at the SCDEA.
The money will also fund a new Scottish Intelligence and Co-ordination Unit to track crime across police forces.
Mr Meldrum, who drafted in a team of academics to help police to identify the gang leaders and how to exploit their weaknesses, warned that the net would now be closing on those involved in serious organised crime, which is estimated to cost Scotland about £2.6 billion every year.
"The message to these people today is that we know more than ever before about who you are, what you do, who you associate with, what you do in the afternoon, what your habits and haunts are. Enjoy it while you can, but look over your shoulder because you'll never know how close we are to you," he said.
Much of the extra funds for the SCDEA will be spent recruiting forensic accountants and other specialists in an attempt by police to counter the increasingly sophisticated skills used by organised crime gangs.
Mr Meldrum revealed that 241 crooked lawyers, accountants and other professionals help criminals to launder money and carry out other activities.
He added: "This is about making life difficult for serious organised crime groups – whether that's about arresting them, whether that's about bankrupting them, whether that's just about making Scotland a really, really difficult operating environment for organised crime."
Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill described the extent of organised crime in Scotland as "very concerning". He said: "They cannot and will not be allowed to spread their criminal networks, and today's announcement will go a very long way towards thwarting them."
Recent high-profile organised crime cases include the jailing of Jamie "The Iceman" Stevenson for almost 13 years in April 2007 over a £1m money-laundering scheme.
George "Dod" Buchanan had to hand over £200,000 of assets in January 2008 after a judge ruled they had almost certainly been paid for from drugs. And Lewis "Scooby" Rodden, was jailed in 2005 for running protection rackets aimed at "persuading" construction firms to award him contracts in Ayrshire.
Long list of organised gangs will help beat the problemTHE idea of mapping and having a better understanding of organised crime isn't new. We have had a national criminal intelligence service for the UK since 1992, but a limited amount of the knowledge was ever placed in the public domain.
But since devolution, Scotland has been building up its own, distinct approaches to tackling organised crime.
The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency has been on a statutory footing for a relatively short period – and is still finding its niche.
This does give it a distinctive identity – for the first time Scotland is being clearly separated out from the rest of the UK on law enforcement.
This first major effort to improve the understanding of serious organised crime in Scotland should be applauded for the professional honesty the police are showing about the scale of the problem.
The results of the mapping exercise now published point to a new culture of openness.
In one sense, these figures might appear an admission of failure. In the past, agencies would say things like "we're going to break the drugs problem" and hail statistics about the millions of pounds worth of drugs that they have seized as evidence of just that.
But that approach has largely been discredited. Seizures of drugs have failed to bring about anything other than the most temporary of blips in the drugs market. No law enforcement agency now seriously thinks seizing drugs makes any difference to stopping the problem.
Law enforcement in the modern era has not lacked information on organised crime. What it has lacked is the ability to build evidence against people.
Organised crime cases are incredibly complicated – they take years to prosecute, because organised criminals, by definition, are extremely adept at protecting their activities.
These numbers emphasise how difficult the challenge is for the police.
• Dr Martin Elvins is a politics lecturer at Dundee University and a member of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research.
