The word “gang” seems inadequate, conjuring up images of hunched and hooded delinquents. The official term, OCGs (organised criminal groups), is an example of how law-and-order professionals speak in cumbersome jargon.

The structure of British organised crime is hard to define. It ranges across an ever-changing spectrum from violent teenage gangs owing loyalty to estates and schools, to long-established families with vicious grips on their neighbourhoods, to vast entities run as if they were international businesses. However, the real “Mr Bigs” may not even be on the investigators’ radar screens. Today’s crime baron is likely to present a respectable face to the world, keeping a layer of accountants, lawyers and muscle between him and his moneymaking activities.

A level below the biggest crime barons are the heads of local criminal families — men such as Colin Gunn, whose gang terrorised the Bestwood area of Nottingham for years, wielding guns and peddling drugs, before a police inquiry ended their reign. The Gooch Gang, embroiled in murder and violence in Manchester, devoted almost all of its energies to turf wars with rivals like the Doddington gang, Longsight Street Soldiers, Old Trafford Cripz and Longsight Crew.Gangs like the Gooch often started as teenage “posses”, quickly graduating from petty violence and theft to drugs and guns. Initiation rites, such as hiding a weapon for an older gang member, secure passage through the ranks. That’s how Jonathan “Venomous” Matondo was trying to make his name in the S3 postcode gang in Sheffield before he was shot dead in a playground at the age of 16.

He was more teenage tearaway than gangster, but because he had carried a gun — and was shot dead — it places him firmly in the world of organised crime.

Matondo was shot with a Baikal 9mm, a Russian gas gun converted to fire live rounds by Lithuanian criminals, who have smuggled thousands of the weapons into Britain since 2006. The pistols were sold to British criminals, who distributed them across the country. In exchange, the Lithuanians often asked, not for money, but for access to the British gangs’ Colombian contacts, in the hope that they could open up new markets for South American cocaine in northeast Europe.

The Getting Organised report suggests that only 10 per cent of the organised groups that have been identified have an international dimension, but at the upper echelons of criminal activity, that proportion is much higher.

Britain’s £40 billion criminal economy provides rich pickings for Russian mafia syndicates, former Balkan paramilitaries who specialise in high-value jewellery robbery and fraudsters who prey on British investors from call centres in Spain.

The extent of criminal fraud, in all its many forms, from “phishing” scams to Ponzi schemes, was put at £14 billion in 2005. That figure was thought to be an underestimate at the time and fraud is known to have increased significantly since the recession hit.

Jon Murphy, the man building the intelligence map of organised crime, says: “British organised crime gangs are unlike the stereotypical Mafia model. There are no set ranks, rules or structures. They are fluid, flexible and opportunist. They often form loose coalitions for a particular venture, or involve individuals. At the very top level, the number of ‘Mr Bigs’ is relatively small.”

Mr Murphy, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, adds: “Serious and organised crime is a multibillion-pound enterprise which erodes the fabric of our communities. It is not an abstract phenomenon — the drugs are dealt, firearms used and acquisitive crime committed in local neighbourhoods.”

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