McMafia creator Misha Glenny says Scottish gangsters are too ‘small-time’ to feature in hit TV show compared to overseas crime bosses
The former BBC foreign correspondent shot to fame earlier this year when his book about the global underworld network was turned into a series watched by seven million people
McMAFIA creator Misha Glenny reckons Scottish gangsters are too little league to appear on his violent telly hit.
The former BBC foreign correspondent shot to fame earlier this year when his book about the global underworld network was turned into a series watched by seven million people.
His gritty show takes viewers on a tour through the dark depths of Russian gangsters, Latin American cartels, people traffickers and dodgy hedge-fund dealers.
But he says organised crime north of the border doesn’t come close to that playing out overseas.
He says: “Cocaine and heroin come from outside the UK and tend to go through Liverpool, Ireland and London.
"By the time you come up to Scotland you’re really dealing with local gangs.”
Misha, who studied at Oxford University, says there is one mention of shady underworld dealings in Scotland that his investigations have dealt with.
He said: “One thing we do refer to in the show is Scottish Limited Partnerships — money-laundering vehicles.
“Basically people can invest money without revealing who they actually are, who the beneficial owner is.
“It could be Russian gangsters, Mexican cartel leaders or French arms dealers, you don’t know.”
Misha, 60, is now bringing his theatre version of McMafia to Edinburgh.
The audience will be treated to animated sketches that explain the origins of ‘gangster capitalism’ in Russia.
But he’s fed up having to explain that McMafia ISN’T a Scottish show.
He adds: “There has been quite a lot of confusion because people assume McMafia has something to do with Scotland.
“When crime started growing in the early 1990s, the toughest gang of them all was the Chechen Mafia in Moscow and what they did was franchise the name out, rather like McDonald’s.
“If you wanted to be using the Chechen Mafia name in central Russia you’d apply to them and pay them for it and maintain certain standards like extreme levels of violence.
“So the McMafia name refers to the franchising of organised criminal organisations.”
The TV show — starring English actor James Norton — became one of the biggest shows on the box earlier this year, and was released ten years after Misha’s book McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld.
Before then, the writer was the BBC’s Central Europe Correspondent responsible for the overall radio coverage of the revolutions in Eastern Europe and the wars in Yugoslavia.
Through his role he got to know a number of key gangsters — from Warsaw to Belgrade and from Moscow to Tirana.
The McMafia name refers to the franchising of organised criminal organisations.
Misha Glenny
And he used his contacts to travel to countries across the world interviewing the bad guys.
He was so fascinated by modern organised crime he thought it would make a hit book — and a TV show.
Misha says: “I write about politics through the prism of organised crime because it’s very revealing and people are absolutely fascinated by it.
“For the moment I’m really enjoying the McMafia franchise on TV, because the book has been revived, and then there’s the theatre show.
"But by the middle of next year I’ll be wanting to move onto the next project, particularly since it’s a very dramatic time in the world with Brexit, Donald Trump and the rise of right-wing populism in Europe.
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“There’s a lot of gangsterism and violence tied up in this stuff. I want to demonstrate that organised crime is not just a separate subject somehow unrelated to what the rest of us are doing, it’s linked in to all these terrible things.”
However, not all of the countries that Misha features in his work are happy with his depictions.
The characters in the McMafia TV show move in a world rife with prostitution, people trafficking and contract killings.
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And the BBC has been criticised by the Russians who say the programme is an unfair representation of their contribution to the UK.
The Russian Embassy’s Twitter account claimed the drama “depicts Britain as a playground for Russian gangsters” and invited followers to guess how many Russian offenders are in UK prisons.
Around 60 per cent correctly guessed the answer was “fewer than ten”.
Despite the war of words, the show has already been picked up by stations in Russia itself, while season two has also been confirmed by the BBC — though no release date has been set.
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