Britain has introduced a national crime-fighting unit modelled on the FBI that aims to tackle major gangs behind such crimes as people trafficking and drug smuggling.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which will have a staff of around 5,000, will tackle drug traffickers, people-smugglers, global paedophile networks and sophisticated fraudsters.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, who announced the unit at Downing Street, said the time had come to end the "tyranny" brought by organised crime.
"We know this organised criminal activity takes place," he said. "The level of sophistication, the level . . . of brutality, with which many of these gangs operate today, means that we have to (operate) differently.
The agency will have new powers such as the use of evidence from phone tapping, plea bargaining for witnesses, and a more sophisticated witness protection programme.
Soca chairman Sir Stephen Lander, former head of Britain's domestic spy agency MI5, has said one of its main goals will be to take on people-smugglers who exploit illegal immigrants, such as the 23 Chinese shellfish gatherers who drowned in Morecambe Bay in northern England in February 2004.
Soca will be Britain's first non-police law-enforcement agency.