International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

The activities of terrorist organizations in the international arena provide benefits of access to global financial flows, various criminal markets, offshore financial centers and banks that guarantee fast large cashless transactions, with guarantees of business and banking secrets. This often requires connecting with criminal organizations that specialize in financial and cybercrime, which is why terrorists are often associated with organized crime. The link between organized crime and terrorism is usually functional, when organized crime is put into function (financing and arming) of terrorism. At the same time, the connection can be instrumental, when terrorist groups are involved in organized crime, and vice versa – when criminal groups undertake terrorist activities. Precisely, the focus of the work will be on determining these correlations and their security implications, which we must take into account when creating effective strategies for combating organized crime and terrorism.

The summary psychological portrait of organized crime perpetrators includes a synthesized characteristic of their motivation, attitudes and values. It presents the specifics of their self-esteem, mental states and personal defences. The report analyses empirical data of organized crime individuals obtained through the Dark Triad questionnaire.
The overall psychological portrait of organized crime perpetrators is oriented towards supporting the operative-investigative, investigativejudicial and penitentiary activities with them.

This work is inspired by the current problems of confronting organized crime, which in part controls illegal markets. Thus, it is also aimed at highlighting the most significant aspects of the research into illegal markets, whose knowledge enables the creation of effective strategic preferences in the fight against organized crime, whose actions have a number of negative implications for state security. Modern criminal organizations are profitable and market-oriented, and the methods of acting used are combined with the criminal and method of the operation of contemporary business organizations. The knowledge of the organization’s specifics and functioning of illegal markets enables the proper selection of methods to more efficiently counter the destructive actions of criminal organizations that control the illegal market. In fact, the destructive action of criminal organizations reflects directly on the state of security by increasing the level of corruption, the level of money laundering and the infiltration of organized crime into legal economic flows, the spread of illegal markets and the increase of the crime rate, but also the ability to generate criminal profits, increasing the economic power of criminal structures that is recursively used for influence on government holders.

The author examines topical issues of security, constituting the bulk of the threats, challenges and obstacles to national and civil security today.