A Paradise for Criminals from All Over the World

This chapter deals with waves of immigration, especially from France and the former Soviet Union, and the expansion of organized crime activities from these countries into Israel. It focuses on the specific cases of French and Georgian criminal groups in the 1970s and the emergence of the so-called Russian mafia in the wake of the “great immigration”’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. Journalists and researchers around the world have discovered that the post-Soviet mafia makes for great copy. In this chapter, fact and fiction about the activities of these groups are discussed.