By The International Crisis Group Latin America and Caribbean

What’s new? The assassination in July of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, perpetrated with no apparent resistance from his elite security detail, and a bout of natural disasters weeks later have further destabilised an already fragile Haiti and intensified its humanitarian crisis at a time of extreme insecurity. Why does it matter? Coming amid intersecting political, human rights, economic and humanitarian crises, Moïse’s killing and other recent events have exposed the chronic failings of state authorities and difficulties in ensuring that foreign support is deployed effectively. Growing insecurity is also driving instability and increased migrant flows within and outside the country. What should be done? Funnelling aid to vulnerable people hit by recent natural disasters, preferably through local civil society, is the imperative. International back ing for prosecuting high-level crimes, police reform and support for a broad-based representative and inclusive interim government stand a better chance than a rush to elections of helping restore stability.

Bogotá/New York/Brussels, The International Crisis Group, 30 September 2021 24p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC); Robert Muggah, et al.

KEY FINDINGS

• Increasingly sophisticated and high-calibre firearms and ammunition are being trafficked into Haiti amid an unprecedented and rapidly deteriorating security situation.

• Haiti remains a trans-shipment country for drugs, primarily cocaine and cannabis, which mostly enter the country via boat or plane, arriving through public, private and informal ports as well as clandestine runways.

• Haiti’s borders are essentially porous, and the challenges of patrolling 1,771 kilometres of coastline and a 392-kilometre land border with the Dominican Republic are overwhelming the capacities of Haiti’s national police, customs, border patrols and coast guard, who are severely under-staffed and under-resourced, a variety of sources with their attendant limitations, including unverified media reports, to take account of recent developments. It opens with a cursory overview of the criminal context in which firearms and drug trafficking are occurring. The second section considers the basic infrastructure that facilitates trafficking, especially seaports, roads and airstrips. Sections three and four examine patterns of trafficking of both firearms and drugs into and out of Haiti. The final section summarizes global, regional and national measures to address related challenges, alongside knowledge gaps warranting deeper investigation. Given the evolving circumstances, any attempt to document firearms and drug trafficking trends in Haiti will be fragmented and partial. Even so, certain tendencies and patterns can be discerned. Very generally, firearms and ammunition typically enter Haiti via land and sea, and drugs usually transit Haiti from seaports, airports and across poorly monitored border points. Most weapons are sourced in the US and make their way to gang members and private residents through intermediaries, often through public and private ports and porous checkpoints. Whether they are interdicted or not, most drugs passing through Haiti are produced in Colombia (cocaine) or Jamaica (cannabis) and shipped directly from source, or pass via Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Venezuela. From Haiti they are shipped onward to the Dominican Republic, Western Europe and, primarily, the US. and increasingly targeted by gangs.

• Heavily armed criminal gangs are targeting ports, highways, critical infrastructure, customs offices, police stations, court houses, prisons, businesses and neighbourhoods.

• Virtually every metric of insecurity, from homicide, sexual violence and kidnapping to the killing of police and migration out of the country – is trending upward.

• International, regional and national responses have underscored the importance of increasing support to law enforcement and border management. Comprehensive approaches encompassing investments in community policing, criminal justice reform and anti-corruption measures are crucial to delivering sustainable peace and stability in Haiti.

Haiti is in the grip of multiple, interlocking, and cascading crises. If unattended, there are serious risks of further destabilization from a myriad of increasingly powerful criminal armed groups. The risks of regional spill-over and contagion are widely acknowledged: The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly raised concerns about the country’s “protracted and deteriorating political, economic, security, human rights, humanitarian and food security crises” and “extremely high levels of gang violence and other criminal activities”. 1 A particular preoccupation relates to the contribution of illegal firearms and drug trafficking in fuelling Haiti’s deepening security dilemmas. This assessment provides an overview of the scope, scale and dynamics of firearms and drug trafficking in Haiti, including sources, routes, vectors and destinations. It is based on published and unpublished information and 45 interviews conducted by UNODC with representatives of the Haitian government, bilateral and multilateral agencies, subject matter experts, and Haitian civil society.2 The situation in the country is deteriorating rapidly, and this assessment has drawn upon

Vienna: UNODC, 2023. 47p.

By Insa Koch, Patrick Williams, and Lauren Wroe

Government policies relating to dealers in ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking cases have been welcomed as a departure from punitive approaches to drugs and ‘gang’ policing, in that those on the bottom rung of the drugs economy of heroin and crack cocaine are no longer treated as criminals but as potential victims and ‘modern slaves’ in need of protection. However, our research suggests not so much a radical break with previous modes of policing as that the term ‘county lines’ emerged as a logical extension of the government’s racist and classist language surrounding ‘gangs’, knife crime and youth violence. Policies implemented in the name of safeguarding the vulnerable also act as a gateway for criminalisation not just under drugs laws but also modern slavery legislation. The government’s discovery of, and responses to, ‘county lines’ hinge on a moral crisis in the making, which ultimately deepens the state’s pre-emptive and violent criminalisation of the ‘Black criminal other’ at a time of deep political crisis.

First published online November 15, 2023., Race & Class, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231201325

By The U.K. Home Office

Purpose - This note provides country of origin information (COI) and analysis of COI for use by Home Office decision makers handling particular types of protection and human rights claims (as set out in the Introduction section). It is not intended to be an exhaustive survey of a particular subject or theme. It is split into 2 parts: (1) an assessment of COI and other evidence; and (2) COI. These are explained in more detail below. Assessment This section analyses the evidence relevant to this note - that is information in the COI section; refugee/human rights laws and policies; and applicable caselaw - by describing this and its inter-relationships, and provides an assessment of, in general, whether one or more of the following applies:

• A person is reasonably likely to face a real risk of persecution or serious harm

• That the general humanitarian situation is so severe that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of serious harm because conditions amount to inhuman or degrading treatment as within paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iii) of the Immigration Rules/Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

• That the security situation is such that there are substantial grounds for believing there is a real risk of serious harm because there exists a serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in a situation of international or internal armed conflict as within paragraphs 339C and 339CA(iv) of the Immigration Rules

• A person is able to obtain protection from the state (or quasi state bodies)

• A person is reasonably able to relocate within a country or territory

• A claim is likely to justify granting asylum, humanitarian protection or other form of leave, and

• If a claim is refused, it is likely or unlikely to be certifiable as ‘clearly unfounded’ under section 94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Decision makers must, however, still consider all claims on an individual basis, taking into account each case’s specific facts.

London: Assets Publishing Service, 2022. 84p.

By Emma Louise Blondes, Emma Disley, Shann Corbett, Fook Nederveen, Jirka Taylor, Ilia Gaglio, Antonino Sorrenti, Francesco Calderoni

This study looks at three ‘tools’ that Member States can deploy in the fight against serious and organised crime. First, this study assesses whether the Council Framework Decision 2008/841/JHA – legislation that aims to ensure that all Member States criminalise participation in a criminal organisation – has achieved its objectives, supports effective cooperation to tackle cross-border serious organised crime and is fit for purpose. Second, this study assesses the extent to which the current legislative framework on the use, protection and handling of crown/principal witnesses and collaborators of justice supports effective cooperation to tackle cross-border serious organised crime. Third, this study explores whether Member States have operational and strategic approaches to identify the links between offences that are ‘enablers’ of serious organised crime (money laundering, document fraud, online trade in illicit goods/services, and corruption) and the broader picture of serious organised crime. Based on interviews, an EU-wide survey, workshops and a document review, the study describes the state of play in relation to these topics and outlines possible policy solutions to the address key challenges identified.

Brussels, Belgium: Publications Office of the European Union, and RAND Europe, 2022. 

By Daniel Egel, Gabrielle Tarini, Raymond Kuo, Eric Robinson, Anthony Vassalo

The mystery surrounding the so-called Havana Syndrome — an unexplained illness first experienced by U.S. Department of State personnel stationed in Cuba in late 2016 — illustrates the challenge of mustering a response to a national security threat when the threat, the underlying method, and the actor behind the threat are not understood with certainty. This report explores the applicability of existing concepts for deterrence and compellence using brief case studies. In addition to Havana Syndrome, the authors explore the SolarWinds cyberattack, in which hackers linked to Russian intelligence conducted a massive cyberattack against American companies and government agencies, and the Chinese Communist Party's connections to organized crime syndicates around the world.

The core finding is that few of the standard response options are effective against these types of threats. Without certainty about who is conducting the actions, strategies that rely on threats of punishment, normative taboos, or rallying of international condemnation are largely ineffective. Denial-by-defense strategies are thus likely to be the most effective but may be difficult to design effectively if the method underlying the attacks is poorly understood.

Key Findings

The ability of the United States to respond effectively to a threat is limited when the attribution, nature, and method of the threat are ambiguous.Maintaining this level of ambiguity likely constrains the scale at which U.S. adversaries can deploy these approaches, but the costs the approaches impose can be large.Despite the appeal of other deterrence or punishment strategies, denial-by-defense is likely to be the only approach capable of reducing the efficacy of these threats.

Santa Monica, Ca: RAND, 2023. 20p.

By Marcos Alan Ferreira, Oliver P. Richmond

This article analyses how criminal governance creates blockages that prevent peace formation in Latin America. Two blockages emerge where criminal governance prevails: criminal structures do not reduce violence and also take advantage of cultural and structural violence; their legitimacy pushes the state away from citizens. Consequently, civil society usually responds in two ways: promoting alternative forms of political praxis against violence; fostering dialogue between political actors and civil society while building broader networks. Our argument shows that local agency has potential competences and the knowledge necessary to address criminal governance discursively, but its capacity to effect structural change is limited in direct terms.

Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding Volume 15, 2021 - Issue 2

By Oluwole Ojewale

This study examines the governance framework for regulating fishing generally in the Republic of the Congo. Specifically, it analyses the drivers and enablers of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) shark fishing and the networks engaged in the criminal economy. The illicit activities linked to shark fishing and fin trading negatively impact ocean biodiversity, the local and national economies. New ways of thinking are needed for effective responses to IUU shark fishing in the country. Key findings • The illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of sharks is driven by local and international demand for shark products. It is further enabled by a lack of state capacity to oversee and enforce legislation and control. • Actors in the criminal supply chain of shark products include artisanal fisherfolk, foreign industrial trawlers, middlemen traders from African countries and Asia, and local women. • The exploitation of shark species negatively impacts environmental biodiversity and has disrupted the ecosystem in the Republic of the Congo’s ocean. • Overfishing of sharks is resulting in juvenile catches, especially of species of conservational concern 

ENACT Africa, 2024. 29p.

By Renato De Almeida Arão Galhardi

Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates. (Working Paper)

Toronto: Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS) and the CERC in Migration and Integration 2023. 23p.

By KPMG Australia  

The Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) set a new standard for modern slavery disclosures in Australia. The Act required entities with a consolidated annual revenue of $100 million or more to disclose their efforts in identifying and addressing modern slavery risks within their operations and supply chain. The objective of the Act was to provide a framework to assist with proactively and effectively addressing modern slavery. 

The 2023 independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, commissioned by the Australian Government (Review), found that the Act had not resulted in meaningful change for people affected by modern slavery.  The review made 30 recommendations to strengthen modern slavery obligations for reporting entities, including the introduction of a positive requirement to conduct due diligence and the introduction of a federal Anti-Slavery Commissioner. The Government has highlighted that many of the Review’s recommendations are in line with key election commitments and introduced a Bill in November 2023 to establish an Anti-Slavery Commissioner. 

KPMG Australia, 2024. 31p.

By Lucía Dammert and Mary Fran T. Malone
In a region plagued by high rates of violent crime and repressive policing practices, Nicara-
gua has earned a reputation as exceptional. Despite poverty, inequality, and a historical legacy

 of political violence and repression, Nicaragua has defied regional trends. It has regis-
tered low rates of violent crime while deploying policing practices that emphasized preven-
tion over repression. April 2018 marked an end to this exceptionalism. Police attacked anti-
government protestors, and launched a sustained campaign against dissidents that continues
to the present day. While the Nicaraguan police had long cultivated a reputation as commu-
nity-oriented and non-repressive, they appeared to quickly change into a repressive, political
force. In this paper, we trace how the Nicaraguan police have evolved over time. Relying
upon longitudinal data from 1996-2019 from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, we
trace the process of police reform in Nicaragua, and analyse public attitudes towards the
police as these reforms unfolded. 

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, No. 110 (July-December 2020), pp. 79-99 (21 pages)

By Wilson Hernández, Lucía Dammert, and Lilian Kanashiro

Latin America is a violent region where fear of crime is well spread but still not fully understood. Using multilevel methods for a large and subnational representative household survey (N = 271,022), we assess the determinants of fear of crime in Peru, the country with the highest fear of crime and crime victimization in the region. Our results show that body-aimed victimization (physical or sexual abuse from a member of their household, and sexual offenses) is the strongest driver of fear of crime, even higher than armed victimization. Moreover, safety measures based on social capital are negatively related to fear of crime, suggesting that they are palliatives rather than real protections. Finally, our study shows that people in a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to fear more because they have more (resources) to lose. Policy implications address Latin America as a whole and punitive policies against crime are common in the region, while evidence-based decisions are scarce.  Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2020, Vol. 53(4) 515–535

By  Mary Fran T. Malone & Lucia Dammert 

 Over the past two decades, most Latin American countries have struggled to create or reform their police forces while simultaneously confronting sharp increases in violent crime. Reformers have gravitated towards community-oriented policing practices, which aim to rely on preventive tactics and build closer ties between police officers and the public. The implementation of such policing practices can be daunting, particularly for countries with authoritarian histories of policing and/or military repression. When confronting rising crime rates, some new democracies are tempted to revert to authoritarian policing practices and circumvent constitutional safeguards on human rights and civil liberties. Still, some countries have resisted such temptations, and seriously invested in community-oriented policing practices. However, do these communityoriented policing practices lead citizens to trust the police more? Or does public trust depend more heavily on results – particularly in countries undergoing crises in public security? To answer these questions, we analyze public trust in the police in 17 Latin American countries through a series of regression analyses of the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) 2016–2017 survey data. We find that community-oriented policing practices tend to garner more public trust, but that perceptions of police effectiveness are equally important.  

POLICING AND SOCIETY, 2020.  

By Alejandra Luneke, Lucia Dammert,  Liza Zuñiga  

Crime increase in Latin America has occurred in parallel with a change in police policy in territories. Along with the processes of militarization and police repression, strategies of co-production have been inspired by community policing, but the articulation of both in urban margins has been understudied. Our hypothesis affirms the coexistence and ambivalence of both social assistance and abusive practices against the city's poor. Qualitative methods conducted in Santiago, Chile, show police policy involves both dimensions, which are strongly rooted in identity elements of the military tradition of the region's police forces.

Dilemas, Rev. Estud. Conflito Controle Soc. – Rio de Janeiro – Vol. 15 – no 1 – JAN-ABR 2022 – pp. 1-26  

By Renato de Almeida Arão Galhardi 

  Historically, Mexicans deported from the United States tend to be overwhelmingly adult men, where the Mexican borderscape of Tijuana is and continues to be the primary site (and sight) where the majority of deported Mexicans are sent to when deported from the United States. Consequently, the semiotic social topography of Tijuana is peopled through the experiences of deportation. How, then, do Mexican deportees negotiate, mediate and articulate their lived experiences of migration? Working with my ethnographic research in Tijuana, during August 2021 and March 2022, I address the ontopological conditioning of living as a deportee in a borderscape such as Tijuana, assessing how their phenomenographic experiences are shaped by the bordering of the Border, and how Mexican deported men are often “unjustly suffering” and enduring “the bare life.” Through discussions on coloniality of Being, I build off Nicolas de Genova’s “border spectacle,” and argue that deportation is better described through its own “spectacle,” the “deportation spectacle,” highlighting how deportees perform and negotiate their agency between the tensions of suffering and resiliency as a consequence of the practices of imposed by deportation. I posit that deportation is not the end of a process, but reshapes migrancy continuity within new constraints, challenges and obstacles. Finally, I conclude by emphasizing the need to recognize misrepresented, misinterpreted and misdiagnosed populations such as deportees in borderscapes such as Tijuana, in order to better attend to the challenges that deportation creates.   

Working Paper No. 2023/07 September 2023  

Toronto: Metropolitan University, 2023. 23p.

By Chris Dyke, Carol Rivas, Karen Schucan Bird

This study, the first to examine parole decisions for perpetrators of domestic violence in England and Wales, examines how parole boards reach decisions through a thematic analysis of interviews with 20 Parole Board members, alongside logistic regressions of all 137 parole decisions about perpetrators in an 18-month period. In this sample, recommendations of professionals, especially psychologists, were by far the strongest predictor of a release decision. The nature of offending was also significant in predicting release. Size and composition of the panel may also affect decisions. More panel members, and longitudinal feedback, may encourage more reflective, considered decision making.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice,  22 January 2024

By  Timothy Cubitt and Anthony Morgan

Risk assessment is a growing feature of law enforcement and an important strategy for identifying high-risk individuals, places and problems. Prediction models must be developed in a transparent way, using robust methods and the best available data. But attention must also be given to implementation. In practice, the data available to law enforcement from police information systems can be limited in their completeness, quality and accessibility. Prediction models need to be tested in as close to real-world settings as possible, including using less than optimal data, before they can be implemented and used. In this paper we replicate a prediction model that was developed in New South Wales to predict high-harm offending among outlaw motorcycle gangs nationally and in other states. We find that, even with a limited pool of data from a national police information system, high-harm offending can be predicted with a relatively high degree of accuracy. However, it was not possible to reproduce the same prediction accuracy achieved in the original model. Model accuracy varied between jurisdictions, as did the power of different predictive factors, highlighting the importance of considering context. There are trade-offs in real-world applications of prediction models and consideration needs to be given to what data can be readily accessed by law enforcement agencies to identify targets for prioritisation.

Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024, 47pg

By Jonathan Goodhand, Patrick Meehan, Camilo Acero, and Jan Koehler

This research paper is the second in a three-part series analysing the nexus between paramilitaries, illicit economies and organised crime in borderland and frontier regions. This research challenges the idea that paramilitaries are symptomatic of state breakdown, flourishing in marginal spaces suffering from ‘governance deficits’; and that they can primarily be understood as apolitical, predatory self-enriching actors, driven by economic motives, and operating outside formal political systems.

In this research paper, a set of detailed case studies are presented that explore coercive brokerage in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar that seek to address these ideas, drawing upon data and analysis generated by a four-year Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project, Drugs & (Dis)order (https://drugs-disorder.soas.ac.uk), and other relevant research.

Birmingham, UK:  University of Birmingham. 2023, 65pg

By Kristina Amerhauser

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are a serious concern in the Mekong region, which includes Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR), Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Facilitated by state-embedded actors, each year vast amounts of illicit proceeds are generated, moved and laundered across the region and beyond in offshore tax havens. This distorts the local economies; deprives the state of income needed for health, education and infrastructure; and deepens inequality. This paper is part of a comparative research project that tests and applies the ‘IFFs pyramid’, a new framework of analysis of IFFs proposed by Reitano (2022), in the context of the Mekong region. Based on a review of secondary literature, it provides an overview of financial flows, trade flows and informality – the three main means by which IFFs are enabled, moved and held according to the ‘IFFs pyramid’ – and discusses how IFFs manifest across the Mekong. It finds that: • There is widespread evidence that each flow is significant in the Mekong and that flows converge and intersect. Nevertheless, current responses to IFFs almost entirely focus on the formal financial system. • Porous borders and strong trade relationships, including with neighbouring China, offer abundant and diverse opportunities for trade-based money laundering (TBML). Lack of capacity to identify misclassified goods and low cross-border collaboration are key impediments to its response. • There are a large number of special economic zones (SEZs), some of which are treated as ‘lawless zones’ where national governments have no authority. This creates widespread opportunities for value to be extracted, under-reported and comingled with legitimate flows. They have also been linked to other illicit markets, such as drug trafficking, the illegal wildlife trade (IWT), human trafficking and financial crimes, and provide the space to generate and launder illicit proceeds in a multitude of ways. • The big informal economy, coupled with the large number of people who remain outside the formal financial system, limits the efficiency of regulatory and oversight instruments. • Political will to tackle IFFs in the Mekong appears to be limited, in large part due to the involvement of Chinese actors. In fact, some actors in charge of the response to IFFs seem to have created loopholes to their own benefit. State-embedded actors are part of the problem, both as a source of IFFs as well as by further enabling them. This research shows that the IFFs pyramid proposed by Reitano (2022) is a helpful tool for organising information related to IFFs in the Mekong and for improving understanding of the major negative impact and harms that IFFs exert on societies and economies of the region  

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 30. University of Birmingham. 2023, 32pg

By  James Porteous

This report examines human trafficking linked to organised crime groups involved in illegal betting and related criminal activity in four key regions in Southeast Asia. Research was primarily via desktop information gathering conducted in 2022/23, supplemented by the expertise and existing knowledge of the Mekong Club and the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime in human trafficking and illegal betting, respectively. Key findings are: • Tens of thousands of people are being held in modern slavery conditions to work in organised illegal betting and cyber-scam operations across Southeast Asia. • These operations, which are run by individuals with long histories of involvement in illegal betting and organised crime across Asia, are estimated to make at least USD 40 to 100 billion a year in illicit profits from such activity. • Some individuals are recruited on false job advertisements, have their passports removed and are kept in dormitories attached to fully contained casino compounds as forced labour to promote illegal betting websites and engage in industrial-scale cyber-fraud such as “pig butchering”, romance scams, and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. • Workers are typically not permitted to leave without paying large ransoms to their captors, and can be sold and traded between organised crime groups. Fines for breaking rules or failing to hit monetary targets are added to victims’ ransoms. • Reports on victim testimony and online video shows “staff” being beaten with iron bars, shocked with cattle prods, tied up, and subject to other forms of torture. Female victims have been forced into sex work for failing to meet targets. • The groups running such operations have been active in organising and promoting gambling across Asia since at least the 1990s. Because many of the core activities in this business (e.g., movement of money across borders, violent debt collection, bribery of local officials, provision of related “entertainment” such as narcotics and sex), are illicit, such operations have by necessity been closely associated with, or directly run by, individuals with organised crime backgrounds. • In the early 2000s, this business was supercharged by the development of online gambling (both casino games and sports betting), run directly out of existing casinos or related properties, which massively increased the target market, and has grown to be a trillion dollar illegal industry funding organised crime. • Attempts to profit from this by governments in Southeast Asia, typically by licensing operators for a fee, have led to the spread of such operations across the region and had major negative impacts, including widespread corruption. It has also concentrated operations in self-contained compounds and so-called special economic zones which local police are often unwilling or unable to enter or investigate. • Hundreds of thousands of workers are required to serve the industry in marketing, customer recruitment, funds transfers, tech support and related fields. • Pre-pandemic, demand for workers was usually satisfied by voluntary means, although an unknown percentage of “voluntary” arrivals were held in modern-slavery like conditions, and there were related human trafficking aspects such as trafficking of sex workers to serve the industry. • This began to change in 2018 as a result of China’s growing concern over cross-border illegal betting, and change was accelerated massively by travel restrictions due to the pandemic, which cut off the supply of workers. • At the same time, the organised criminal groups had a key business line – land-based casinos – essentially closed down because of travel restrictions. As a result, they greatly expanded and developed existing cyber-scam operations, leveraging their expertise and technology in areas such as social media marketing, customer recruitment and cryptocurrency, which were in place from their online illegal betting operations. • Now, as the pandemic recedes, the organised crime groups running these operations have, in effect, hugely increased their potential revenue by complementing illegal betting with cyber-scam operations of comparable scale. • The success of such operations has been an enormous financial boon to organised crime, for whom cyber scams and illegal betting are just two of many illicit business lines that include money laundering as a service, illicit wildlife trafficking and production and distribution of methamphetamine and heroin. • The vast profits from such operations have provided plentiful ammunition to corrupt local authorities, and the operations in this group are frequently protected by powerful politicians and/or armed militias. • Global attention on the issue has not eliminated this activity, just displaced it into even more vulnerable jurisdictions, leading some to fear the industry could lead to geopolitical instability.   

Hong Kong: Asian Racing Federation, 2023. 39p.