ByThe Financial Action Task Force

he COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented global challenges, human suffering and economic disruption. It has also led to an increase in COVID-19-related crimes, including fraud, cybercrime, misdirection or exploitation of government funds or international financial assistance, which is creating new sources of proceeds for illicit actors. Using information provided to the members of the FATF Global Network on 7 and 23 April, this paper identifies challenges, good practices and policy responses to new money laundering and terrorist financing threats and vulnerabilities arising from the COVID-19 crisis.

As the world is focusing on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is impacting on the ability of government and the private sector to implement anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CFT) obligations in areas including supervision, regulation and policy reform, suspicious transaction reporting and international cooperation. This could lead to emerging risks and vulnerabilities that could result in criminals finding ways to:

• Bypass customer due diligence measures;

• Increase misuse of online financial services and virtual assets to move and conceal illicit funds;

• Exploit economic stimulus measures and insolvency schemes as a means for natural and legal persons to conceal and launder illicit proceeds;

• Increase use of the unregulated financial sector, creating additional opportunities for criminals to launder illicit funds;

• Misuse and misappropriation of domestic and international financial aid and emergency funding;

• Exploit COVID-19 and the associated economic downturn to move into new cash-intensive and high-liquidity lines of business in developing countries.

AML/CFT policy responses can help support the swift and effective implementation of measures to respond to COVID-19, while managing new risks and vulnerabilities. This paper provides examples of such responses, which include:

• Domestic coordination to assess the impact of COVID-19 on AML/CFT risks and systems;

• Strengthened communication with the private sector;

• Encouraging the full use of a risk-based approach to customer due diligence;

• Supporting electronic and digital payment options.

Paris: FATF, 2020. 34p.

By The Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented global challenges, human suffering and economic hardship. The pandemic has also spawned a range of COVID-19-related crimes, which are creating new sources of income for criminal networks. In May, the FATF highlighted the COVID-19-related money laundering and terrorist financing risks and policy responses.

Today, the FATF releases an Update-COVID-19-Related-Money-Laundering-and-Terrorist-Financing-Risks

The paper confirms the concerns expressed by the FATF in May, including:

• Changing financial behaviours - especially significant increases in online purchases due to widespread lockdowns and temporary closures of most physical bank branches, with services transitioning online.

• Increased financial volatility and economic contraction - largely caused by the losses of millions of jobs, closures of thousands of companies and a looming global economic crisis.

To respond to these evolving risks, authorities and the private sector need to take a risk-based approach, as required by the FATF Standards. This means mitigating the money laundering and terrorist financing risks without disrupting essential and legitimate financial services and without driving financial activities towards unregulated service providers.

Supervisors should also clearly communicate about the national risk situations and regulatory expectations. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, the FATF’s report on risks and policy responses provides guidance on how jurisdictions should address these issues.

Paris: FATF, 2020. 34;p.

By Marie Nougier, Adrià Cots Fernández & Dania Putri

April 2021 marks the five-year anniversary of the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs. This report aims to take stock of progress made on the implementation of the operational recommendations included in the UNGASS Outcome Document. Using desk-based research, and drawing on data and analysis from UN reports, academia, civil society and the community, the report focuses on six critical areas: public health, development, human rights, civil society engagement, UN agency collaboration and cooperation, and drug policy evaluation. While some progress has been undeniably made, the research gathered in this report shows that in the last five years the gap between policy commitments on paper and meaningful change on the ground has continued to widen.

London: International Drug Policy Consortium, 2021. 115p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Colombia’s counternarcotics policy choices have profound impact on consolidating peace in the wake of the 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — Ejército del Pueblo, FARC) and on the building of an effective state. Strategies of forced or voluntary eradication of coca crops have proven ineffective. As evidence from around the world shows, a long-term comprehensive effort to promote alternative livelihoods for coca growers — integrated into rural development and supported by well-designed interdiction efforts, with eradication delayed until these alternative livelihoods are generating sustainable income — has the best prospects for producing peace and a capable state and for reducing drug production.

To achieve sustainable and robust reduction of illicit crop cultivation, Colombia must thus expand its timeline of drug policy and state-building intervention well beyond 15 years. To achieve any viable transformative effects, it will also have to concentrate resources to selected zones of strategic intervention and gradually connect them and expand them to encompass larger areas in state intervention efforts.

The alternative livelihoods approach requires a concerted effort to build international support, particularly with the United States. It also requires countering the objections of Colombia’s political right. Arguments can be framed around the ineffective and counterproductive outcomes of forced eradication, the demonstrated benefits of comprehensive alternatives livelihood combined with well-designed interdiction to reduce the power of criminal groups, and other counternarcotics priorities in the United States.

A zero-coca conceptualization that insists on eradication first and conditions development aid on prior eradication of coca jeopardizes peace-building and statebuilding. In Colombia and elsewhere in the world, it has consistently failed to produce a sustainable reduction of coca cultivation. Forced eradication undermines the peace deal with the FARC and the broader legitimacy and presence of the state by jeopardizing the state’s ability to establish meaningful presence in areas formerly dominated by nonstate armed groups and radicalizing communities and cocalero (coca cultivator) movements. Aerial spraying will only compound these problems; drones will not redress the negative political effects, even if somewhat increasing the precision of spraying.

Washington, DC: Brookings Foreign Policy , 2020. 30p.

By Enrico Lucca, et al.

In the wake of the Nazi regime’s policies, European Jewish cultural property was dispersed, dislocated, and destroyed. Books, manuscripts, and artworks were either taken by their fleeing owners and were transferred to different places worldwide, or they fell prey to systematic looting and destruction under German occupation. Until today, a significant amount of items can be found in private and public collections in Germany as well as abroad with an unclear or disputed provenance. Contested Heritage. Jewish Cultural Property after 1945 illuminates the political and cultural implications of Jewish cultural property looted and displaced during the Holocaust. The volume includes seventeen essays, accompanied by newly discovered archival material and illustrations, which address a wide range of topics: from the shifting meaning and character of the objects themselves, the so-called object biographies, their restitution processes after 1945, conflicting ideas about their appropriate location, political interests in their preservation, actors and networks involved in salvage operations, to questions of intellectual and cultural transfer processes revolving around the moving objects and their literary resonances. Thus, it offers a fascinating insight into lesser-known dimensions of the aftermath of the Holocaust and the history of Jews in postwar Europe.

Göttingen : Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, [2020]

By Jos van Beurden

The discussion about objects, human remains and archives from former colonial territories is becoming increasingly heated. Over the centuries, a multitude of items – including a cannon of the King of Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, M.ori heads and strategic documents – has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means. Since gaining independence, former colonies have been calling for the return of their lost heritage. As continued possession of these objects only grows more uncomfortable, governments and museums must decide what to do. How did these objects get here? Are they all looted, and how can we find out? How does restitution work in practice? Are there any appealing examples? How do other former colonial powers deal with restitution? Do former colonies trust their intentions? The answers to these questions are far from unambiguous, but indispensable for a balanced discussion.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. 249p.

By Jos van Beurden

This pioneering study charts the one-way traffic of cultural and historical objects during five centuries of European colonialism. It presents abundant examples of disappeared colonial objects and systematises these into war booty, confiscations by missionaries and contestable acquisitions by private persons and other categories. Former colonies consider this as a historical injustice that has not been undone. Former colonial powers have kept most of the objects in their custody. In the 1970s the Netherlands and Belgium returned objects to their former colonies Indonesia and DR Congo; but their number was considerably smaller than what had been asked for. Nigeria’s requests for the return of some Benin objects, confiscated by British soldiers in 1897, are rejected. As there is no consensus on how to deal with colonial objects, disputes about other categories of contestable objects are analysed. For Nazi-looted art-works, the 1998 Washington Conference Principles have been widely accepted. Although non-binding, they promote fair and just solutions and help people to reclaim art works that they lost involuntarily. To promote solutions for colonial objects, Principles for Dealing with Colonial Cultural and Historical Objects are presented, based on the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. They are part of a model to facilitate mediation in disputes about them. Europe, the former colonisers, should do more pro-active provenance research into the acquisitions from the colonial era, both in public institutions and private collections.

Leiden: Sidestone Press Dissertations, 2017. 206[p.

By European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol

EU Drug Market: Amphetamine describes the European amphetamine market from production and trafficking, to distribution and use. It details the processes, materials and actors involved at different stages and levels of the market. Taking a threat assessment approach, the module identifies key issues and makes recommendations for action at EU and Member State level.

Amphetamine is the most common synthetic stimulant drug available on the European drug market and it competes with cocaine and a range of new psychoactive substances for a share of the profitable European Union (EU) stimulant drug market. The prevalence of amphetamine use is higher than methamphetamine in most EU Member States, with notable exceptions, such as Czechia and Slovakia. Illicit amphetamine products mostly consist of powders or pastes, usually mixed with other ingredients, such as lactose, dextrose or caffeine, but tablets containing amphetamine are also available. The estimated annual value of the retail market for amphetamine in the EU is at least EUR 1.1 billion, with a range of EUR 0.9 billion to EUR 1.4 billion.

The demand for amphetamine in the EU is met by European production concentrated largely in the Netherlands and Belgium, where production is complex, large-scale and based on the drug precursor BMK. BMK has some limited use in industry and can be diverted from legitimate sources or smuggled into the EU, but more frequently it is made from chemicals known as designer precursors imported from China. Some of the amphetamine produced in the EU is used to produce captagon tablets, which are mainly trafficked to consumer markets in the Middle East

Lisbon, Portugal: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol, 2023. 8p.

By Saša Đorđević

Fuel smuggling is the illegal transport, sale or purchase of petroleum products such as crude oil, petrol, diesel and other refined petroleum products. It has been a persistent illicit trade in the Balkans for over three decades.

In 2022, police and customs of the seven Balkan countries seized more than 3 000 tonnes of illegal fuel, with a retail value of €4.3 million – almost four times more than the value of fuel seized in all of 2021. Fuels are goods subject to high excise and customs duties that smugglers try to avoid paying. Alternatively, smugglers seek to profit by evading embargoes on oil imports and exports. From this perspective, the Balkan countries’ public funds lost at least €1.2 million in 2022 as a result of fuel smuggling.

However, relying solely on seizure data to evaluate the illicit fuel market may lead to misleading conclusions because of law enforcement’s inherent challenge in substantiating the unlawful provenance of fuel. This discrepancy becomes more apparent when considering the estimated scale of the issue. In Bulgaria alone, for example, the projected value of illegal fuel in 2019 reached approximately €0.5 billion, resulting in significant budget losses of €250 million.

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Libyan electoral crisis, both of which involved major oil-producing countries, the UN extended measures to combat illicit petroleum exports from Libya in July 2022. The EU also imposed bans on Russian oil in December 2022 and again in February 2023, as part of its response to the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the Balkans became the focus for licit and illicit fuel manoeuvres.This report analyzes the mechanisms of fuel smuggling during times of crisis and instability in the Balkans, considering both internal and external factors that contribute to the overall landscape. It identifies lessons learned from fuel smuggling in the early 1990s and then moves to explain the evolution of this activity with reference to trafficking methods, actors and routes through to 2022. The report also identifies countries in the Balkans at particular risk from fuel smuggling, as well as hotspots that allow illicit trade, particularly on rivers and seas. The report, furthermore, assesses the typical profile of criminal actors active in fuel smuggling. The research is limited to cross-border fuel smuggling operations rather than illegal distribution within a specific country.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 34p.

By James Byrne and Joe Byrne

North Korea relies on the outside world to import fuel.26 With no demonstrated oil reserves and limited domestic refinery capacity, imports of refined petroleum products are vital to the regime’s stability and survival. As in all modern economies, energy—predicated on a constant flow of fuel into the country—underpins North Korea’s domestic and export economy, as well as Pyongyang’s capacity to train and field armed forces and develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The international community’s efforts to cap North Korea’s oil and petroleum products imports in 2017 forced Pyongyang to adapt its fuel-procurement strategy. This report finds that North Korea has been engaging organized criminal networks and participating in a regional fuel smuggling market in violation of international sanctions, and that the nation is demonstrating increasingly sophisticated and previously unseen tactics to evade detection. Even by conservative estimates, Pyongyang appears to have successfully bypassed fuel sanctions and exceeded the cap imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) each year since the introduction of the limit.27 Despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic and by North Korea’s restrictions on port traffic, analysis of highresolution satellite imagery of oil terminals and import facilities suggests North Korea has once again breached the import cap in 2020. Through analysis of AIS data and satellite imagery, the authors found that the proportion of fuel deliveries to North Korean ports by foreign-flagged tankers is significant and has been increasing.28 This phenomenon raises important questions about the entities behind these sanctions violations, and it calls for scrutiny of how smugglers continue to evade detection and identification while transporting fuel within some of the most heavily monitored waters in the world. In this investigation we find the following: North Korea has tapped into an existing fuel smuggling economy in East Asia to procure fuel at volume. Different national-level regulatory and pricing regimes for fuel in the region create arbitrage opportunities that smugglers have long exploited to generate immense profit. These smugglers divert fuel from the licit market to sell to various customers, one of which is North Korea. Taiwan appears to be a key locus in this regional black market for fuel. The country’s preferential fuel policies price refined petroleum products lower than those of its neighbors, creating opportunities for arbitrage and offering smugglers a cheap and readily available source of fuel. Additionally, several of the networks and entities engaged in DPRK–related fuel smuggling operate from or out of addresses or ports in Taiwan. The country’s waters are also being exploited by illicit actors conducting DPRK-related, ship-to-ship (STS) transfers of fuel in a multilayered shuttle system that bisects both “dirty” vessels traveling directly to North Korea and “clean” vessels discreetly supplying those direct-delivery tankers with fuel on the high seas. North Korea’s illicit fuel supply chain has links to organized crime. Several of the key actors in North Korea’s fuel procurement originate from, and maintain connections to, Fujian province, China and, in particular, the city of Shishi. Shishi and the nearby coastal cities of Fujian province have long been a regional smuggling hub for illicit goods, such as cigarettes, wildlife products, drugs, and fuel. These actors appear to constitute a loose criminal federation whose interests and activities intersect to smuggle fuel to North Korea. A key node in this DPRK fuel procurement network appears to be the Winson Group, a major regional oil trader. The Winson Group is headquartered in Singapore and has offices across East Asia; it has links to several shipping and oil trading companies in the region, as well as businesses registered in secrecy jurisdictions, through which it has connections to possible STS transfers of fuel that ultimately end up in North Korea. The founder of the Winson Group also has a documented history of cigarette and fuel smuggling and alleged connections to illicit DPRK-related commercial activities. This report finds that North Korea’s shipping and maritime sanctions evasion tactics are highly adaptive and growing increasingly sophisticated in response to pressure from and enforcement by the international community. While these outcomes indicate the sanctions regime has complicated and increased the cost of illicit business for North Korea, the demonstrated adaptability of the country’s maritime trade networks also underscores, in dramatic fashion, the growing cost of monitoring, detection, and enforcement. This report also highlights the need for authorities to better explore the connections between North Korea, underground economies, and transnational organized crime, and it adds to the existing but underexplored literature of the country’s links to organized criminal networks. Relying on sanctions to block North Korea’s licit avenues of procurement creates a supply-and-demand dynamic between providers of illicit goods and services—often criminal organizations—and Pyongyang. To stay abreast of North Korea’s evolving tactics for evading sanctions, this report recommends that international, government, and civil regulators proactively monitor criminal networks that provide the country with contraband goods and services, while closing regulatory loopholes in the international sanctions regime, rather than reactively investigating instances of sanctions evasion.

Washington, DC: c4ads, 2021. 84p.

By Ken Opala

Despite the August 2022 elections proceeding relatively smoothly, there is still a clear nexus between politics and crime in the country.

Election violence remains a major problem in Kenya despite attempts by the state and other actors to tackle it. Ahead of the country’s fifth general election, held on 9 August 2022, state agencies, the media and civil society predicted the re-emergence of gangs and militias keen to influence its outcome. Although the elections went off relatively smoothly there is still a clear nexus between politics and crime.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 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 Gina Bou Serhal, Kristian Alexander and Rahaf Alkhazraji

This issue brief delves into the changing landscape of Italian organized crime, focusing on the ‘Ndrangheta, a potent criminal group originating from Calabria. It explores how the ‘Ndrangheta has diversified its criminal activities, including drug trafficking and environmental crimes, and its alleged connections with international criminal and terrorist organizations. The brief also sheds light on the emergence of the youthful “Baby Mafia,” or Camorra in Naples, known for its decentralized structure and social media presence glamorizing criminal life. It emphasizes Italy’s efforts to combat organized crime and the necessity for a united European approach to address the mafia’s global influence and adaptability across borders.

Stockholm: Institute for Security and Development Policy, 2023. 6p.

By Harm Reduction International

This report follows development aid being spent on narcotics control around the world. It calls on governments and donors to divest from punitive and prohibitionist drug control regimes which undermine their other health and human rights commitments, and invest in programmes which prioritise community, health and justice.

Mass incarceration and overpopulated prisons. Death sentences. Civilians killed during counter-narcotics operations by specialised police units. Poor farmers’ livelihoods destroyed by aerial spraying and other ‘forced eradication’ of crops they keep. Rights violated by forced treatment programmes, discrimination, and barriers to health care. These are among the consequences of the global war on drugs that has particularly impacted poor, marginalised, and racialised communities around the world.

The evidence base for such negative impacts is now vast and widely recognised internationally, including by United Nations (UN) agencies and in reports published by the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Also well-documented internationally are the benefits of alternative approaches to drug policy – including harm reduction initiatives that advance, rather than undermine, public health and human rights – and the lack of evidence that punitive and prohibitionist approaches to drugs have actually curbed drug use. Despite this, vast amounts of international funding continue to flow to punitive drug control activities, while harm reduction remains vastly underfunded.

There is a long history of drug policy being used by world powers to strengthen and enforce their control over other populations, and to target specific communities. Racist and colonial dynamics continue to this day, with wealthier governments, led by the US, spending billions of taxpayer dollars around the world to bolster or expand punitive drug control regimes and related law enforcement. These funding flows are out of pace with existing evidence, as well as international development, health, and human rights commitments, including the goal to end AIDS by 2030. They rely on and reinforce systems that disproportionately harm Black, Brown and Indigenous people worldwide.

In order to decolonise drug policy and advance health- and human rights-based approaches, the material and financial bases of punitive drug control must be revealed and redirected. This report contributes to these goals by synthesising existing research on international financial flows for punitive drug control, and adding new analysis of data on official development assistance (ODA) spent by aid donors and institutions on “narcotics control”. These specific, public budgets are supposed to support international development, including health goals and global poverty reduction. This spending is more commonly associated with initiatives to vaccinate and educate children, for instance – but project-level data included in this report shows that some of it has also gone to supporting things like undercover policing, “intelligence-led profiling”, and efforts to increase arrests and prosecutions for drug-related offences.

LACK OF TRANSPARENCY

Each year, aid donors report their spending to the OECD which maintains what is called its Creditor Reporting System (CRS). According to the most recent update of the data in this system (from mid-December 2022, covering spending through the end of 2021), more than USD 930 million of aid money was spent on “narcotics control” projects in countries around the world in the ten years from 2012-2021. This includes spending by dozens of donors – led by the US, EU, Japan, and the UK. Tens of millions of dollars of this total (at least USD 68 million over the period studied) were spent in countries that have the death penalty for drug-related offences. This raises particularly serious concerns about whether and how aid budgets have bolstered regimes that execute people, building upon previous HRI research in this area. While some donors, such as the UK, have spent less aid this way in recent years, others have increased it – most notably the US, where such spending rose significantly in 2021, in the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration.

Though data availability and transparency vary across projects and donors, this analysis reveals how aid money has supported approaches that undermine global development goals and “do no harm” principles. Put simply: aid funding is supposed to help poor and marginalised communities, while punitive drug control regimes have been shown to disproportionately negatively affect them. This makes such regimes a poor fit for such important yet limited development budgets. This research also shows how these donors have numerous opportunities – as well as obligations – to change how they invest in global drug policy by funding under-resourced, evidence-based, and health- and human rights-centred harm reduction efforts instead, worldwide.

London: HRI, 2023. 38p.

By The United Nations General Assembly. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

The present report outlines human rights challenges in addressing and countering key aspects of the world drug problem. It also offers an overview of recent positive developments to shift towards more human rights-centred drug policies, and provides recommendations on the way forward in view of the upcoming midterm review of the 2019 Ministerial Declaration and to contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

United Nations, 2023. 19p.

By Amanda Doggett, ; Kyla Belisario,; André J. McDonald,; et al

Importance A key concern about recreational cannabis legalization is increases in use and adverse consequences, particularly among young adults (aged 18-29 years) who have the highest prevalence of cannabis use, and especially in higher-risk, more vulnerable young adults. However, few longitudinal studies have examined patterns of cannabis consumption in high-risk young adults over the course of legalization.

Objective To examine changes in cannabis use frequency and cannabis-related consequences over recreational cannabis legalization in Canada in a longitudinal sample of high-risk young adults.

Design, Setting, and Participants Longitudinal observational cohort study following young adults in Ontario, Canada, aged 19.5 to 23.0 years who reported regular heavy episodic drinking (65% past-month cannabis use) at enrollment. Participants were surveyed every 4 months for 3 years between February 2017 and February 2020 (3 prelegalization waves, 4 postlegalization waves). Data were analyzed from March to May 2023.

Exposures Recreational cannabis legalization in Canada and 4 potential moderators of change: sex, income, education, and prelegalization cannabis use frequency.

Main Outcomes and Measures Cannabis use frequency and cannabis-related adverse consequences.

Results In a cohort of 619 high-risk young adults (baseline mean [SD] age, 21.0 [1.2] years; 346 female participants [55.9%]), omnibus model testing revealed significant overall decreases in both cannabis use frequency (F = 2.276, 3000.96; P = .03) and cannabis-related consequences (F = 10.436, 3002.21; P < .001) over time, but these changes were substantially moderated by prelegalization frequency (frequency: F = 7.5224, 3021.88; P < .001; consequences: F = 7.2424, 2986.98; P < .001). Follow-up tests showed individuals who used cannabis more frequently prelegalization significantly decreased their use and cannabis-related consequences postlegalization. In contrast, individuals who did not use cannabis prelegalization exhibited a small magnitude increase in frequency over time but nonsignificant changes in cannabis-related consequences. Sex, income, and education did not moderate changes over time.

Conclusions and Relevance In this cohort study of high-risk young adults, individuals using cannabis frequently prelegalization showed significant reductions in use and consequences over time, reflecting an aging out pattern. Small increases in use among participants with no prelegalization use were observed over time, but without parallel changes in cannabis-related consequences. The results did not reveal substantive adverse near-term outcomes across the legalization period, although a within-participants design cannot rule out the possibility of alternative trajectories in the absence of legalization.

JAMA Netw 5 September 2023Open; 6(9); 2023

By Matt Herbert and Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo i

Since the turn of the millennium, organized crime has surged from a small number of locally or regionally active organizations into a plethora of syndicates operating throughout the globe. Their operations are now often transnational, either active in multiple countries or involved with illicit commodity chains that extend across borders and interlink different regions.

Organized crime players are increasingly active in criminal markets, from human trafficking to cybercrime to illicit fuel sales. Although the value of global organized crime activity is unknown – and likely unknowable with any real precision because of its nature – it is huge. Individual markets such as drug trafficking or timber extraction are estimated to generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

The rising prevalence and profitability of organized crime have had a substantial impact in many of the states in which networks operate. In part, this is through the corruption and/or coercion of state officials to allow criminal activity or purchasing impunity.

Such official complicity is now the most important factor enabling the spread and operations of organized crime and also a key impediment to efforts to design solutions and build resilience to it.

Criminal groups have been important sponsors of armed groups seeking to control, in full or in part, the territory of states across the world. Increasingly, organized crime actors have developed autonomous military capacity, becoming key threats to peace and security in their own right. Impacts of organized crime on governance also manifest from the bottom up, with local communities highly vulnerable to criminal actors’ attempts to violently seize de facto control, limit access to public services or establish alternative governance structures.

Because of this profusion of impacts, the international community is devoting increasing resources to counter the phenomena of rising organized crime. At a national level, this has seen greater funding of security force and criminal justice actors, an expansion that is mirrored in international aid, with heightened donor focus on security sector reform and governance, judicial sector training and programmes to build binational and multinational coordination on security challenges, including organized crime.

The international community has also sought to build arrangements for multilateral reciprocal cooperation, such as the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), also known as the Palermo Convention. However, these have struggled to achieve the necessary effects and are often outpaced by criminal evolution, leading many states to prefer unilateral or ad hoc initiatives to address transnational organized crime. Further, many governments are shifting their approach to organized crime, assessing it as a national security threat rather than purely as a criminal justice challenge. The result has been that, while criminal justice tools such as multilateral arrangements con-tinue to be relied upon, other approaches – involving military, financial and diplomatic tools – are becoming increasingly common. The use of targeted sanctions has emerged as part of this expanding international toolkit to address organized crime.

Such sanctions can be defined as legal authorities that prohibit certain forms of otherwise licit activity, including financial access or travel, for a specific entity in order to hamper their pursuit of a specific goal. Historically, they have mostly been used against countries whose activities were interpreted as threats to peace and security or individuals who had breached international law or norms. Despite the growing use, there has been limited tracing of why and how different international actors have converged in their use of targeted sanctions, how they have developed processes to issue and implement sanctions regimes and their impact and effectiveness. This report series focuses on the use of targeted sanctions against criminal actors. The series encompasses both global reports and country-specific and thematic studies.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023. 75p.

By Summer Walker I Mariana Botero Restrepo

The relationship between illicit economies, conflict and instability has been long debated in academic and practitioner circles, and part of the international policy agenda for some time. From the diamond trade in Sierra Leone to the heroin trade in Afghanistan, illicit economies have been shown to fund insurgencies and political actors, and to contribute to ongoing conflict.

The GI-TOC’s 2021 Global Organized Crime Index shows that of the ten highest-scoring countries for criminality, meaning those with the most pervasive criminal markets and influential criminal actors, the overwhelming majority are countries experiencing conflict or fragility.

This report considers three case studies at different stages of armed conflict to assess the dynamic relationship between criminal networks, illicit economies, and conflict actors and conditions. These three case studies offer unique perspectives in terms of duration, size of the conflict area and stage of the conflict:

• Armed insurgency in northern Mozambique

• Armed groups in Libya and Mali

• Armed groups in Colombia

While these conflicts present three distinct cases, they also share relevant similarities. In these cases, unrest is created after an armed group or groups counter the legitimacy of the state. The national response to the conflict is supplemented with regional and international responses. All situations lack a swift resolution, and the instability persists primarily in areas outside capitals, even after formal conflict resolution. In this way, these three cases are representative of sustained, localized instability deriving from armed conflict between the state and non-state armed groups.

All three conflict areas overlap with areas of established illicit economies. In these settings, the connections between armed conflict and illicit markets evolve over time. The impacts may be commodity-dependent, with different considerations for illegal mining as opposed to trafficked drugs. Illicit markets change over time, as do the power brokers and beneficiaries involved. Illicit economies contribute to long-term enabling environments for instability by prolonging conflict and eroding government responses to conflict. Through the case studies of northern Mozambique, the Sahel region and Colombia, this report identifies ten dynamics that influence illicit economies and conflict situations. These findings make a contribution to vital policy discussions for stabilization and conflict mediation in these – and other – re

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime., 2022. 74p.

By Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Before February 2022, Russian and Ukrainian organized crime formed the strongest criminal ecosystem in Europe. Having developed along similar lines in the 1990s, Russian and Ukrainian criminal groups and networks controlled a lucrative transnational smuggling highway between Russia and Western Europe that carried gold, timber, tobacco, coal, counterfeit/untaxed goods, humans and drugs. At the more politically connected end of the spectrum, corrupt officials and criminal bosses from both countries exploited Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas to siphon off millions of dollars, while Ukraine’s oligarch class exerted a strong grip over the country’s economic, political and information spheres.

Kyiv made serious efforts to tackle organized crime and corruption after the 2014 Maidan Revolution but results were mixed, especially in the case of judicial reform; meanwhile, the conflict in the Donbas region helped bolster an array of illicit economies and criminal actors. For organized crime, business was generally good.

The Russian invasion has inflicted a profound shock to this ecosystem. With the war, collaboration between Russian and Ukrainian organized crime interests became impossible due to the political situation (which led many criminals to break such ties) and the pragmatic challenge of smuggling across what was now a violently contested and dynamic front line. Many Ukrainian crime bosses chose to leave the country, as did many oligarchs, including several accused of pro-Russian sympathies. Martial law and the curfew also initially constrained criminal activity. According to senior sources in the Ukrainian police, incidents of armed robberies declined by a factor of between three and four, and the homicide rate dropped to almost zero at the beginning of the war (although this may partly reflect the impact of the war on reporting in the early days of the war). It may be that the impact of the invasion also whittled out some less robust and resilient organized crime groups: according to data from the general prosecutor’s office, the number of organized crime groups under investigation decreased from 499 in 2021 to 395 in 2022 (although this decline alternatively could reflect dimished investigative capacity).

This report explores the changing dynamics in the political economy of Ukrainian organized crime up till December 2022 and maps how the criminal landscape has adapted to the new situation. Given the complexity of the impact of the war in Ukraine on organized crime in both parties to the conflict, the GI-TOC is producing two reports. This report concentrates on developments within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders – with the exception of the so-called Luhansk and Donetsk ‘people’s republics’ (LDNR) in the Donbas region, which broke away from Kyiv in 2014 with Russian backing and assistance, and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed the same year. The impact of the conflict on organized crime in these areas and on Russian organized crime more generally will be discussed in a separate report, which will assess trends in sanctions busting and money laundering, changes in trafficking flows east of Ukraine and how Russian organized crime groups have responded to the conflict.

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023. 60p.

By Julia Stanyard | Thierry Vircoulon | Julian Rademeyer

Russia has rapidly increased its engagement in Africa in recent years, both politically and economically, as it seeks to expand its influence on the continent. However, Russia’s activities in Africa are subject to controversy. Our new report sheds light on the Wagner Group, a private military company rapidly becoming the most effective form of Russian engagement in Africa.

The group comprises a network of political influence operations and economic entities such as mining companies. It has been accused of using whatever means necessary to achieve its aims, including criminal activity. The US government recently designated Wagner as a ‘transnational criminal organization,’ allowing for broader sanctions against Wagner and its enablers.

The report argues that the Wagner Group is unique as an organization in the breadth, scale, and boldness of its activities. However, the study also shows that Wagner did not emerge in a vacuum: The group’s activities and characteristics reflect broader trends in the evolution of Russia’s oligarchs and organized crime groups, their respective relationships with the Russian state, and their activities in Africa.

By focusing on case studies in several African countries, the report helps to shed light on the complex dynamics between Russia, its oligarchs, and its criminal networks and how they interact with African governments, businesses, and populations. This report draws on research conducted since July 2022, as well as other sources from across the continent, providing a comprehensive overview of the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa. The report provides important insights into the evolving relationship between Russia and Africa and how this is shaping politics and economics on the continent, serving as a resource for journalists, policymakers, and researchers seeking to understand the complex dynamics of Russian engagement in Africa.

Center for the Study of Democracy; Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, 2023.92p.