Frank Bovenkerk is cultural anthropologist and professor of criminology at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. His main fields of research are organized crime, discrimination and crime and ethnicity. His current interest is moving toward the field of cultural criminology.

Michael Levi has been Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University, Wales, UK since 1991, and has been researching organised and white-collar crime issues since 1972. He has degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Southampton Universities. His books include Drugs and Money (with Petrus van Duyne), 2005; Fraud: Organization, Motivation and Control I and II,1999; Money-Laundering in the UK (with Michael Gold), 1994; The Investigation, Prosecution, and Trial of Serious Fraud, 1993; Regulating Fraud: White-Collar Crime and the Criminal Process, 1987; and The Phantom Capitalists: the Organisation and Control of Long-Firm Fraud, 1981, to be republished by Ashgate in 2006 with a new introduction. He is currently completing White-Collar Crime and its Victims and White-Collar Crime in the Media for Clarendon Press, Oxford, and a variety of research studies on serious and organised crime.

Introduction Michael Levi and Frank Bovenkerk The Origins of IRAN-CONTRA: Lessons from the Durrani Affair Alan A. Block California Dreams and Gangster Schemes: The Standley Commission, the Guarantee Finance Company, and the Social System of Organized Crime in post-World War II Southern California Jeffrey Scott McIllwain and Clinton Leisz New Times, New crimes: 'Blocking' Financial Identity Fraud Henry N. Pontell The United Nations Oil-for-Food Program: Corruption, Bribery and International Relations in the Serious Crime Community Don Liddick Bystander Memories Explored. Dutch Gentile Eyewitness Narratives on the Deportations of the Jews Dienke Hondius Mid East Meets Mid West? Theopolitics, Crime and Terror in the U.S. R.T. Naylor Assessing organised crime. The sad state of an impossible art Petrus C. van Duyne and Maarten van Dijck The Rise of Two Drug Tigers: the development of the illegal drugs industry and drug policy failure in Afghanistan and Colombia Francisco E. Thoumi Half-baked legalization Won't Work Frank Bovenkerk Pecunia non olet? The control of money-laundring revisited Michael Levi Any man's death.... Some reflections on the significance of international criminal justice Chrisje Brants Vita Alan A. Block

This book contains a collection of essays in honor of Alan A. Block including his now classic study on the origins of IRAN-CONTRA. It brings together important contributions from Block's students and contemporaries to show the impact of his work on the field of global organized crime. Professor Alan A. Block of Penn State University has proven to be one of the most inspiring criminologists in the field.