How crime took on the world - Part two

In the second programme of this series which charts the explosion of international organised crime, Misha Glenny returns to his old stamping ground the Balkans, to follow the trail of smuggled cigarettes.

The collapse of Yugoslavia and its wars led to the imposition by the United Nations of severe economic sanctions on the region.

Immediately, smuggling became not just a matter of survival but it provided the perfect environment for crime syndicates to flourish. At the centre of the money-making machine were cigarettes, often smuggled into the region from the West then smuggled out again, back into the European Union. Politicians, intelligence services, police forces and criminals cooperated to keep the flow of fags and money going.

Misha Glenny visits the Serb capital Belgrade and Montenegro as he charts the route of this "duty-not-paid" contraband. He speaks to the former President of Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic, who is surprisingly candid about his state's involvement in this lucrative illegal trade.

Mr. Bulatovic tells Misha "There was so much money, we were picking it up off the floor... so I said we had to be more organised about this, let's go through Switzerland."

Misha then crosses the Adriatic over to Italy. At the peak of this smuggling at least twenty high-powered speed boats a night, stuffed full of cigarettes, shot across from the coast of Montenegro to land on the Italian coast.

The whole operation was a massive enterprise. Not only was it worth millions of dollars that filled the pockets of individuals and mafia groups but it also funded the most bloody conflict Europe has seen since the Second World War, the Balkan Wars.