By Prem Mahadevan

India has seen a tripling of demand for sand from 2000 to 2017, creating a market worth 150 billion rupees, or just over two billion US dollars. The country has the third-largest construction industry in the world, following those of China and the United States, accounting for 9 per cent of its two-trillion-dollar economy and employing more than 35 million people. Given the dizzying rate of India’s construction boom, guesstimates indicate a massive shortage of licitly mined sand.

This paper looks at patterns of sand mining in India and the impact that it may have on governance, security, the environment and the growth of entrenched criminal networks. The conclusions suggest that civil administration is retreating before a mafia-like nexus of political, business and bureaucratic interests, which connive to flout judicial orders. The secondary and tertiary effects of such activity bode ill for societal stability, even though a certain amount of (tenuous and often exploitative) employment is generated by illicit sand mining. The paper also highlights a policy conundrum: can India, which, paradoxically, combines widespread economic backwardness with sky-high consumer aspirations, find a model of environmentally sustainable development? Or is it doomed to exacerbate the harshness of already abysmal living standards experienced by its rural population (who make up two-thirds of its population) to satisfy the needs of its urban middle class?

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime 2019. 27p.

By Eric Scheye

Using country specific formulae in three categories – water and electrical utilities, tax administration and land management – this paper presents an empirical methodology to measure state actors' political will to reduce organised crime.

A lack of political will is often used as an excuse by policymakers, donors and development practitioners to explain failures in policies and programmes. While this is true for most development programming, it is particularly salient with regard to anti-corruption, the rule of law, and efforts to combat organised crime. Indeed, political will is vital if governments are to reduce the deleterious activities of organised crime; without it, crime proliferates. Using country specific formulae in three categories, water and electrical utilities, tax administration and land management, this paper presents an empirical methodology to measure the political will possessed by state actors to reduce organised crime.

ENACT-Africa, 2020. 20p.

By Edward Wanyonyi and Lucia Bird

As the development of communications infrastructure accelerates, good governance and security are often sacrificed in the interest of a speedy rollout.

While Africa’s growing communications infrastructure and increasing internet penetration offer significant developmental benefits, they offer parallel opportunities to organised crime, which exploit the continent’s enhanced connectivity. These opportunities are set to grow with nascent research already indicating that the continent is an increasingly important source of both cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled crime. It is a crucial and already tardy moment to take stock of how these vulnerabilities manifest, and how they can best be addressed. If they remain ignored and unmitigated, organised crime will increasingly undermine progress and development, compromising the achievement of the very goals that enhanced infrastructure seeks to achieve.

ENACT-Africa, 2021. 20p.

By Mark Shaw

Foreign criminals are a significant presence in Africa. Four typologies of foreign criminal actors are identified, allowing an exploration into why some actors develop more successful criminal enterprises than others. Success appears to be the result of a slow embedment in the local criminal economy, avoiding displays of wealth and the targeted corruption of officials. It also depends on the expansion of ethnic networks where high levels of trust or coercion of members prevent law enforcement penetration. Eroding these successful criminal operations requires an ability to disrupt recruitment into the networks and ultimately their more effective integration into legitimate economic activities.

ENACT-Africa, 2028. 24p.

By Mohamed Daghar

Kenya faces a scourge of illegal and unregulated sand mining, a crime which is leaving irreversible scars on ecosystems, lives and livelihoods. Sand mining has been driving inter-communal conflict and has ushered in a violent cartel market protected and controlled by state actors. Weak legislation, ineffective controls and an insatiable demand for sand, fuelled mainly by the construction industry, all contribute to the problem. With lack of a formidable alternative, sand remains the only option for mass concrete production. But it must be harvested sustainably and not mined – as promising practices in communities suggest. Key findings • The sand trade is driven by organised criminal cartels that enjoy protection from powerful state actors. • Communities play a crucial role in ensuring sustainable sand harvesting, which can provide long-term employment opportunities and help to reduce job scarcity for Kenya’s youth. • Sand mining in Kenya is fuelling environmental degradation, affecting livelihoods and increasing inter-communal conflict. • A lack of strong regulations and sufficiently mandated authorities means that there is no effective framework to oversee sand activities. • Properly regulated sand harvesting and trading could generate much-needed revenue for local governments.

ENACT-Africa, 2022. 24p.

By Olwethu Majola and Darren Brookbanks

This paper uses data and analysis to assess the UNTOC's effectiveness in addressing transnational organised crime on the continent. The international community prescribed the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) as the treatment to slow the global spread of TOC. However, current diagnoses suggest that this has not been as effective as anticipated. This paper assesses the efficacy of the UNTOC and recommends some changes to the treatment that are likely to yield more successful results.

ENACT-Africa, 2023. 32p,

By Raouf Farrah

The civil society of the Libyan northwest city of Zuwara has led several efforts over the last years to tackle criminal governance with notable successes and failures. In 2014-2015, Zuwara’s CSOs took an impressive stand against human smuggling, providing assistance to migrants, raising awareness of the impact and dangers of smuggling, and leveraging elites to strengthen local taboos against human smuggling. Although community efforts continue to fight against criminal governance through awareness-raising and education campaigns via media, religious discourse and university campuses, the 2014-2015 momentum has been lost. Zuwara’s civil society has the means to reignite its stance against criminal governance. To do so, it needs more political recognition, more assistance from international stakeholders and better cooperation between local stakeholders with clearer boundaries between law enforcement and CSOs.

Geneva: e Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) and Migrant Network., 2021. 29p.

Juan Diego Cárdenas - Javier Lizcano Villalba - Lara Susana Loaiza - Laura Alonso , etc.

There were always going to be dissident elements from the FARC, from those who were unconvinced by the peace deal or simply refused to consider it. However, the ex-FARC mafia is now growing at such a rate that Colombia’s entire peace process is at risk. Almost every peace process has had combatants who refuse to give up their arms. There was no reason that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) should be any different. Looking abroad first, the Northern Ireland peace process saw the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA, more commonly known as the IRA) reach the “Good Friday Agreement” with the British government in April 1998. It did not take long for the “Continuity IRA” and the “Real IRA,” which has now morphed into the “New IRA,” to appear. But while a series of bombs have been set off and some isolated killings have taken place, Irish dissident groups have been unable to win any significant support or rebuild the military capacity of the PIRA. …

Washington, DC: Insight Crime, 2019. 72p.

By Julia Stanyard | Thierry Vircoulon | Julian Rademeyer

The Wagner Group has rapidly become the most influential form of Russian engagement in Africa today. Principally a private military company – the group is a supplier of mercenary troops – it also comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies. Controlled by a historically close ally of Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner has a seemingly mutually beneficial relationship with the Russian state. The group has been accused of using whatever means necessary, including criminal activity, to achieve its aims: from indiscriminate use of violence against civilians in its military engagements, to disinformation campaigns and election-rigging to industrialscale smuggling of natural resources, like gold and diamonds. The group operates in the grey zone, spanning both legal and illegal economies. In late January 2023, the US government designated Wagner as a ‘transnational criminal organization’, allowing for wider sanctions against Wagner and its enablers. The Wagner Group is unique as an organization in the breadth, scale and boldness of its activities. However, as this report aims to show, Wagner did not emerge in a vacuum. …

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime., 2023. 92p.

By Uglješa Ugi Zvekić, Sunčana Roksandić and Bojan Dobovšek,

This report uses the term ‘organized corruption’ to explain how corruption is embedded in the political economy of many countries in the region. Organized corruption is a ‘a symbiosis of organized crime, criminal methods and high-level corruption, which creates a crooked ecosystem that enriches and protects those with access to power’. Organized corruption is not only about systemic illicit financial gains and undue influence in decision-making, but also the systemic buying and influencing of social support to gain or maintain political and economic power.

Organized corruption is particularly evident in the political context of transitions towards democracy, when key parts of the economy are in the public domain, as is the case in the Western Balkans. In this context, control of politics and control of the economy are interlinked. Being in power means controlling the strings of the public purse. Political parties utilize political power to acquire economic influence through the control of public finances and public officials. Political victory enables the use of state funds and enterprises for patronage and to gain financial, political and social benefits. In such an environment, elections are often a winner-take-all contest, not only for the political parties but also for those who benefit from patronage. It therefore follows that those who profit from power have an interest in financing political parties and elections.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), 2023. 72p.

By Francisco Cuamea

Until 2012, when the United States gradually began the regulation and decriminalization of marijuana, Mexican cartels had secured a decades-long monopoly on the US cannabis market. As they became displaced from that market, the cartels scaled up their production of synthetic drugs, such as crystal methamphetamine, which is produced in clandestine laboratories that are generally set up in remote locations in the mountains, rural areas or small towns. The rich biodiversity that surrounds these sites is affected by the chemical waste resulting from crystal meth production that is dumped near these labs. In addition to the crystal meth market, Mexican organized crime groups also entered the black market in endangered marine species and industries built on other high-value species. Organized crime groups have begun to leave a significant environmental and social footprint, accelerating the disappearance of certain marine species and the disintegration of fishing communities.

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  One of the affected regions is the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California, made up of the Mexican states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Nayarit, Sinaloa and Sonora, which together contribute 11% of the country’s gross domestic product and are united by the immense gulf of north-western Mexico, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. According to UNESCO, the Sea of Cortez comprises 244 islands, islets and coastal areas. It contains 695 vascular plant species and 891 types of fish, of which 90 are endemic. The number of plant species is much higher than those recorded at any other island or marine site on the World Heritage List. The region is home to 39% of the world’s total number of marine mammal species and 33% of the global number of cetacean species. The region also contains a wealth of endangered land flora and fauna as well as examples of intangible cultural heritage, many of which come from the indigenous peoples of north-western Mexico, such as the Yaqui, the Cora and the Cucapá.6 This brief explores the threat that illicit economic activities pose to biodiversity and ecosystems in the Sea of Cortez region, as well as to some of the area’s most vulnerable communities, those that depend on the fishing industry.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), 2023. 17p.

By Anastasia Austin and Douwe den Held

The Dominican Republic prides itself on its openness to the world. As one of the first countries to open up during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seeks to be ever welcoming to tourism and business. But criminals may feel welcome as well. In this three-part series, InSight Crime dives into the infrastructure, the trafficking networks, and the corruption facilitating organized crime in the Dominican Republic.

Washington, Insight Crime, 2022. 26p.

By Mark R. Mallon

Informal entrepreneurship represents a common mode of business formation globally and entails starting and operating a business without registering it with legal authorities. Despite the size of the informal sector in many countries, the motivations for entrepreneurs to operate non-registered ventures are not well understood. Although formal institutions play an important role, we argue that the decision to operate a non-registered new venture is influenced by a pervasive informal institution around the world: the practice of extortion payments to organized crime. Because criminal organizations foster the development of norms and beliefs cementing extortion payments as an institution, we posit that entrepreneurs will use non registration as a buffer to avoid extortion costs preemptively. We further explicate that this choice is contingent upon founders’ access to resources and ventures’ product-market strategy, which shape visibility to organized crime and the ability to resist extortion and, thus, alter the need for non- registration as a buffer against institutionalized extortion. Our analysis of over 8,000 new ventures operating in 39 economies largely supports these arguments. This study identifies a novel causal mechanism in the nomological network of informal entrepreneurship, namely, the prevalence of organized crime, and informs a multilevel theory of how entrepreneurs choose the type of organizational form for their ventures. Finally, it illuminates the importance of shadow institutions—illegal and not widely accepted practices—which may operate as unique but often overlooked types of institutions that shape entrepreneurial and organizational decisions.

Journal of Management, 48(1): 2022.

By Peter Tinti

Since 2013, the Republic of Mali has become a focal point of international efforts to stabilize the Sahel region through a mix of direct military intervention, security assistance, development aid and humanitarian support. A coup on 18 August 2020, and a subsequent consolidation of power by the ruling junta on 24 May 2021, combined with ongoing insecurity throughout the country’s centre and north, have prompted various international actors to reconsider their stabilization efforts in Mali. While mandates from international coalitions aim to restore stability, governance and security to the country, a misinterpretation of the relationship between violent extremism and organized crime has led to an emphasis on technical, militarized approaches that do not adequately consider consequential dynamics on the ground. This paper explains the risks of this approach for undermining stabilization efforts across the region and provides recommendations for: focusing analysis and policy on informal and criminal economies, rather than violent extremism; and adopting more development-focused interventions that better support Malian communities.

Geneva, SWIT: The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 32p.

By  Steven Dudley, Parker Asmann and Victoria Dittmar 

In 2019, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).1 What would become known as “remain in Mexico” was the latest in a decades-long effort by successive Republican and Democrat administrations to curb migration by making it increasingly difficult for migrants to enter and stay in the United States. However, the policies have had numerous unintended consequences, including bolstering criminal organizations along the US-Mexico border. Whereas the smuggling of drugs and weapons used to dominate the cross-border contraband trade, human smuggling has morphed into one of the most lucrative industries for crime groups. It also has made it increasingly dangerous for migrants who face more risks en route and along the US border. This report aims to highlight the role US policy has played in this transformation, which continues to evolve today. Specifically, it analyzes the ways in which Mexican organized crime groups have become involved in human smuggling as risks rose, prices surged, and migrants began to move through less-traveled corridors. The goal is to inform policymakers who are looking to address irregular migration and combat Mexico’s criminal organizations. ….  

Washington DC: Insight Crime, 2023. 22p.

By Eleanor Beevor 

In May 2022, two Nigerian citizens were arrested in Niamey, Niger, while trying to drive back to Nigeria in a stolen Toyota Corolla. The Corolla had a Nigerian licence plate, but police discovered that the car had recently been stolen from a Nigerien police officer. Fake military identification cards, and another Nigerian licence plate, were found in the car. The men were posing as Nigerian military officers. One had in fact been a former officer but was discharged in 2017 for desertion, and the other worked for Nigeria’s correctional service. After an investigation, it transpired that the men had left Nigeria three days before the arrest, and they had driven to Niamey in a stolen Toyota Hilux. The car, stolen in Nigeria, was resold in Niamey with the assistance of a Nigerien accomplice who was later arrested. It appears that this accomplice was also involved in the theft and resale of motorbikes, and possibly of other illicit commodities such as weapons. He was found with three AK-47 rifles and 151 cartridges, along with a stolen motorbike, other motorbike parts and three wristwatches. This example showcases many of the dynamics of car theft in the central Sahel region….

Geneva, SWIT::Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime , 2023.  38p.

 By Anastasia Austin and Douwe den Held 

The Dominican Republic prides itself on its openness to the world. As one of the first countries to open up during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seeks to be ever welcoming to tourism and business. But criminals may feel welcome as well. In this three-part series, InSight Crime dives into the infrastructure, the trafficking networks, and the corruption facilitating organized crime in the Dominican Republic.

Washington, DC, Insight Crime, 2022. 26p

By Camilla Fabbri https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4692-9646 camilla.fabbri@lshtm.ac.uk, Heidi Stöckl, […], and Cathy Zimmerman

Over the past decade, third-party labor recruiters who facilitate employment for migrant workers across low- and middle-income countries have often been considered by the counter-trafficking community as one of the main entry points into human trafficking. In response, anti-trafficking prevention programs have increasingly focused on addressing exploitative recruitment in migrants’ origin countries. Such programs may advocate for increased regulation of migration, greater enforcement actions against unlicensed recruiters, stricter ethical codes of conduct for recruiters and employers, and more pre-departure information about recruitment for migrants. Yet, there remains limited research about the relationship between prospective migrants, recruiters, and human trafficking, and the relative importance of third-party recruitment in the trafficking process. This Research Note draws on the world's largest database of individual victims of trafficking cases, the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Global Victim of Trafficking Database (VoTD), to examine the role and characteristics of recruitment of trafficked victims. The VoTD contains information on nearly 50,000 trafficking victims who were registered for assistance from 2002 to June 2018. Our analysis shows that 94 percent of trafficked victims were recruited, in a broad sense (i.e., not only by third-party intermediaries). Additionally, the data presented here suggest that the relationship between recruitment and trafficking is complex and that forced labor is embedded within the wider structural issues around low-wage labor migration that lead to exploitative work conditions. Interventions to address human trafficking will benefit from strategies that target systemic issues constraining or harming low-wage labor. Further, these findings highlight the value of large-scale administrative datasets in migration research

  International Migration Review 2023, Vol. 57(2) 629-651  

Steven Dudley – Victoria Dittmar – Sara García, Jaime López-Aranda, Annie Pforzheimer, and Ben Westhoff

Precursor chemicals pose an unprecedented challenge for governments and multilateral organizations seeking to mitigate the development, manufacturing, production, and distribution of illicit synthetic drugs. As opposed to most legacy drugs -- which rely on plants, harvests, favorable weather, significant and varied manual labor, and transport of bulk amounts of illicit substances across heavily-policed terrain -- synthetic drugs can be produced in laboratories all year-round using a wide variety of mostly sparsely or unevenly regulated chemicals, which can be employed at different stages of the process in rudimentary laboratories and transported in large or small amounts, often without the knowledge of the transporters themselves. The sources for these chemicals span the globe. They are currently concentrated in China, where a relatively small number of companies appear to be producing precursor chemicals, in mainly two provinces. These chemicals are marketed and sold on the internet, where an army of online providers offer well-regulated and unregulated chemicals via the Clearnet and the dark web. These marketers are sometimes extensions of these same production companies and sometimes independent. Some are also clans, which appear to own numerous production and marketing companies. The precursors are transported to Mexico via cargo ships or air cargo, traveling direct or via circuitous routes. Cargo is often mislabeled, camouflaging the contents, purpose, or amount of their shipment. In Mexico, brokers and independent buyers facilitate this trade, filing paperwork, creating fictitious companies, or bribing officials.

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  The chemicals then make their way to small producers. Often referred to as “cooks,” these producers synthesize the precursors into illicit synthetic drugs that are then sold to large buyers and transport specialists. Two large criminal networks buy and move synthetic drugs in bulk: the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG). These networks are responsible for bringing this product across the most difficult part of its journey and thus charge a premium for their services. After they sell the drugs wholesale, they are largely absent, leaving the distribution and retail sales to other local criminal networks. The precursor industry -- and the synthetic drug industry writ large -- is so challenging to disrupt precisely because it works across legal and illegal spheres, involves many layers and different criminal networks, and has many means to obtain its final objective: the sale of synthetic drugs to an increasing number of consumers. …

Washington, DC: InSight Crime, 2023. 147p.

By Inés Fynn

“If you see something you have to be blind, deaf, and dumb, that’s how it works here”  “If you keep silent, you don’t mess with them, and they won’t mess with you”  “Everyone here knows what to talk about and what not to talk about”  The above statements exemplify the coping strategies of people living in communities affected by drug gangs. Despite differences in the gangs’ modus operandi, silence is a common factor in how communities respond. The current understanding of criminal territorial control overlooks the role of communities and their silence in shaping how criminal organizations operate. This research aims to explore how drug  gangs establish commitments of silence with communities, how these commitments vary, and why some are more enduring than others. Organized criminal groups often establish localized systems of private order that challenge the territorial reach of the state (O’Donnell, 1993). Comparative politics research has recently focused on criminal governance schemes to analyze the logic of territorial control of drug-trafficking organizations. Criminal governance refers to local orders led by criminal organizations that impose formal or informal rules and restrict the behavior of criminal and non-criminal civilians (Lessing, 2020). However, despite community members dealing with drug gang operations daily, these studies fall short in incorporating the central role of communities in shaping drug gangs’ operations.

  Santiago de Chile, Chile .   Instituto de Ciencia Política Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile , 2023. 178p.