Famously, mobster Al Capone was not laid low by other gangsters nor by criminal law -- but by the tax code.

He was strangled by bureaucratese. 

Tom Hunter suggests a Japanese-inspired idea to do the same for our local gangsters. And it starts with a humble McDonald's burger, for which a low-level thug wouldn't pay. Turns out something dramatic happened when McDonalds sued the Yakuza gang to which the thug belonged.

'That idea is captured in the dry phrase “employer liability.” In a normal company, if an employee injures someone while doing their job, the victim can often sue not only the individual, but the company and its representative director. The logic is simple: those who profit from dangerous activity should bear the risk of it. Japanese lawyers and police began asking: why should a crime syndicate be any different?'

Death by bureaucracy! Brilliant. What this meant was that all you had to prove was that the guy who had stolen, beaten or murdered someone worked for a Yakuza ..., which is exactly what McDonalds did with the thug.

Simple.

It started with a cheap burger. And is now at the point where the "boss of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang is losing his house (in a flash Tokyo district) because he lost a 270 million yen lawsuit against a firm that was damaged by one of his 'employees'.'

And here's Tom's thought:

Why couldn’t New Zealand copy these Japanese laws, or at least the conceptual principle of them, and apply them to the likes of the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, Head Hunters, and the rest?

Makes sense?