The collapse of the Soviet Union was “the single most important event prompting the exponential growth of organized crime around the world” in the 1990s and 2000s: 
A peek behind the curtain of caviar poaching/smuggling (and Gorbachev’s efforts to stop it):
(These excerpts are from: powells.com/book/-97814000…)
“Italian prosecutors were desperate to indict [Milo Đukanović] on charges of smuggling and of maintaining links with the Mafia. Yet at the same time, the U.S. sent discreet messages to Rome requesting the Italians lay off him.”
Interesting bit on how the Soviet collapse led directly to the explosion of organized crime in 1990s Israel, "which was the ideal place to invest or launder money... [and] had no anti-money-laundering legislation."
“The implication of these figures is stark: western Canada is home to the largest per capita concentration of organized criminal syndicates in the world.”
