The four highest earning crimes in South Africa are costing victims an estimate of R110.5 billion a year, an expert at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said on Tuesday.Speaking at the Annual Border Management Conference, Charles Goredema, program head of the organised crime and money laundering program at the ISS, said the four crimes in SA which contributed the most toward criminal activity were drug trafficking, smuggling, financial and predatory crime.
He estimated that financial crimes "earned" the most with total gains of R80 billion to R90 billion a year, drug trafficking and smuggling of goods about R10 billion each while predatory crimes such as robbery, house breaking and theft cost victims about R500 million a year.
"It's not an academic calculation, that's just a rough estimate," Goredema said.
Using the latest SA Police Service crime figures, he took the average of the highest and the smallest amount of money gained by criminals in a specific category of crime and multiplied the amounts by the number of crimes during the year.
"This year I will make a much more detailed calculation because I will get the actual figures," he said.
Source : Sapa /sm/nm/ml
Date : 17 Mar 2009 14:09
