Mafias & Banks - Season 1

The meeting between the world of mafias and the world of finance is tentative and almost accidental. But when drug trafficking exploded and the mafias became richer than ever before, they found intermediaries in the banking world. The result was a veritable cataclysm: the biggest banking collapse on record.

For criminal organizations, money became a problem: there was too much of it. The 1980s saw the development of modern money-laundering techniques. In the background, the Cold War provided protection for the Panamanian dictator and the Mafia bank alike. For the first time, governments tried to follow the money to crush criminal organizations. But the Reagan and Thatcher years were those of deregulation, and the opportunities for money laundering exploded.

In an instant, all borders fell: the Russian mafia emerged, Hong Kong returned to the Chinese fold. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world became one, and capitalism triumphed. In the flood of global transactions, it's impossible to keep track of the money. And the banks, which are supposed to monitor the system, are shameless accomplices to the mafias.