THE newcomer is taken into a darkened room. He knows everybody there. The man at the head of the table asks him would he die for these people, would he kill for these people and would he use these tools?
On the table are a knife and a gun.
The man has to cut himself with the knife and drip his blood on to a holy picture. Then he burns this picture in his hand, saying: "May my soul burn in hell if I betray my secret oath."
This was the initiation ceremony in the US Mafia, as explained by a US lawyer, Mr Charles Rose, at the International Bar Association conference in Dublin.
Nowadays the mob is getting squeamish about contagious diseases, and a syringe has replaced the knife. A tissue, which generally burns faster and less painfully, has replaced the holy picture.
The three day conference, which ends today, heard about organised crime in New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and eastern Europe. The US administration now views the activities of organised criminals as one of the main threats to national security, and recently signed a mutual assistance treaty with its old Cold War enemy, Russia.
"Organised crime in the US has a history of immigration to the US." With each wave of immigrants came a criminal element.
There are five main Mafia "families" in New York, he said. Up to the 1980s they controlled the heroin market, and then the Asian gangs began to undercut them, selling for less than half the going rate.
Mr Rose said US authorities believed the influx from Asia was happening because of the handover of Hong Kong to China next year.
However, Mr Peter Nguyen, Director of Public Prosecutions in Hong Kong, told the conference it was a myth that Hong Kong was exporting criminals. The economic prosperity of south China meant the Hong Kong triads were concentrating operations there, rather than further afield, he explained.
There were about 50 Triad societies in Hong Kong, he said, up to 20 of which have attracted police attention. He said that only 5 to 10 per cent of all detected crime in Hong Kong was attributed to Triad activities.
Ms Jane Wexton, a lawyer with General Electric Capital, said criminal organisations could update their technology every three months. The best governments could change only every three years.
