Organized crime looks East

Originally Published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Available Here.

In 2013, international attention began to fixate on the organized crime challenge in East Asia. The region is no stranger to organized crime; groups such as Japan’s Yakuza and Hong Kong’s Triads have long exercised a strong influence over East Asia’s criminal underworld. However, the region’s breakneck economic growth has changed the stakes of the game. No longer is East Asia a peripheral market for drug traffickers, cyber criminals, and human smugglers, too small in scope and value to be a target in its own right. Increasing affluence in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have opened up a market for organized crime figures comparable in value, and larger in absolute population size, than the traditional high-value organized crime markets in Europe and the United states. One estimate notes that by 2025, China’s middle class alone will number 520 million. As East Asia’s licit market booms and beckons, so too does East Asia’s illicit market. Transnational criminal groups have moved rapidly to gain an advantage.

East Asia, and particular China, has become an increasingly lucrative market for drug trafficking organizations. In China, the number of narcotics users is, according to some estimates, above 15 million. Even this huge population of heroin and amphetamine users represents an extremely low usage prevalence rate, both compared to international levels and China’s historic averages. China’s user population is destined to grow. Throughout the region, tens of millions of others regularly purchase and consume narcotics. Historically, producers in the region have supplied East Asia’s narcotics market. This is starting to change. Now, amphetamines are being imported to Japan and China from West Africa, while cocaine is increasingly filtering across the Pacific and into the clubs of Melbourne and Shanghai.

The profits to be made in drug trafficking are huge, and have prompted drug trafficking crime groups from Africa, Latin America, and Europe to try and get involved in the East Asian market. Individuals associated with Mexican drug trafficking organizations have been turning up in increasing numbers in China, including at least one case where one was arrested at a meth lab in the country. Further south, Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs have continued to expand in Australia and South-East Asia, peddling methamphetamines and coercive violence wherever they go. Increased efforts by external organized crime groups to penetrate East Asia’s drug market are likely to accelerate in 2014, propelled as much by the stagnation of narcotics sales in Europe and the US as by the dynamism of the East Asian market.

In addition to drug, human trafficking is increasing throughout the region. The trafficking of persons for labor and sexual trafficking has been an endemic problem for generations. However, the China’s gender imbalance – with tens of millions more males than females – is propelling an increasingly vibrant market in “wife” trafficking. These victims are often trafficked from Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar; enjoying few rights and high-levels of risk in China, they are vulnerable to domestic violence and forced prostitution.

East Asia has also spurred a sharp rise in ivory trafficking over the last decade. While some consumers are interested in ivory products as evidence of their social status, many have come to view ivory as an investment. In China, there are indications that an Ivory “bubble” has emerged, whereby investor demand and the increasing rarity of ivory producing animals prompt a continual rise in price. In turn, the rapid appreciation in price increases the attractiveness of ivory as an investment vehicle, spurring yet more demand. It is a vicious value circle, and one which, given the finite amounts of ivory in existence, is difficult to deter.

The increased importance of East Asia’s criminal market for criminal organizations makes cooperation with regional governments a vital reality for those seeking to counter those same groups. Cooperative endeavors against ivory, for example, will not succeed without buy in from China. How international actors’ structure their outreach to East Asian governments, and perhaps more importantly how East Asian governments respond, will be a key area to watch in 2014.

Finally, East Asia’s organized crime challenge will not be restricted to the large and rich countries that comprise the dominant markets for illicit goods – such as China, Japan, Korea, and Australia. The poor and peripheral countries of the region will be far more threatened.Limited government capacity in these countries will attract organized crime groups, looking for uncontrolled space in which to establish bases and production facilities. It is quite possible that nations in south-east Asia and western Oceana will be buffeted by high levels of criminal violence in the coming years, similar in scope and challenge to what Central American countries are currently dealing with. Signs of violence and corruption related to organized crime in the less affluent areas of East Asia should be monitored closely, lest ripples of violence further destabilize an economically vital yet precarious region.

Hail to the King (and pay his nephew a bribe)

Originally Published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Available Here.

Dino Bouterse sits in jail, facing a formidable set of charges. According to prosecutors he traffics drugs, smuggles weapons, and openly consorts with terrorists. While lurid, the case would hardly be notable, save for who Dino Bouterse is and where he is being charged. Mr. Bouterse is the son of President Desi Bouterse of Suriname. While his crimes took place in Suriname, he effectively enjoyed immunity from prosecution there. It wasn’t until he was lured to Panama that he could be arrested, extradited, and put on trial in the United States.

Dino Bouterse is far from unique. Throughout the world, the relatives of heads of state have been caught consorting with transnational organized crime. The association is often mutually beneficial. A key challenge for organized crime groups is identify how best they can avoid enforcement of the law. Frequently, this leads them to bribe local security and justice officials on a large. However, it is far more efficient to bribe one high-level individual who enjoys the ability to impact government policy more broadly. The friends and family of a State’s leader can often have such an impact, especially in states in which the Executive wields absolute or a large degree of control.

More rarely, relatives of a head of state engage directly in organized crime. Dino Bouterse fell into this category, reportedly conspiring to import cocaine to the United States. A more notorious example is Rifaat Al-Assad, the younger brother of former Syrian President Hafaz Al-Assad, who was reportedly deeply involved in drug trafficking and car theft in the 1980s and 1990s. The rational behind this engagement in the illicit involves a mix of opportunity and reward. The obvious opportunity involves the inviolability these individuals, their position rendering them capable of evading legal responsibility for their acts. In some cases, as with Rifaat Al-Assad, their influence enables them to employ state resources to further their criminal endeavors. Collusion with or engagement in organized crime can be financially lucrative for the relatives of government leaders, enabling them to profit from their government ties, even if they do not receive a formal government salary.

The international community is challenged in its attempts to hold individuals such as Mr. Al-Assad or Mr. Bouterse accountable. They enjoy both effective immunity from prosecution and extradition in their home countries. Diplomatic concerns may also effectively stymie international efforts at prosecution. However, as Dino Bouterse’s case shows, when international will exists the relatives of heads of state can still be held accountable for their actions.

Illicit enterprises are certainly not the only entities to leverage family members of a national leader to gain a business edge. Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of Equatorial Guinea’s President, reportedly pocketed large bribes from foreign timber companies seeking to operate in the country. In Guinea (Conakry), the wife of General Lansana Conté, the nation’s former leader, reportedly assisted a small international mining company in gaining access to highly profitable iron deposits. Licit businesses do not pay under duress, but rather because they crave access and advantage over their competitors.

Hoping for Brave New World

Originally Published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Available Here.

The boat was packed. Five hundred men and women were on board, hailing from Ghana, Somalia Eritrea, and a kaleidoscope of other countries. Sailing north from the Libyan coast the boat was within sight of its destination when it began taking on water, and then capsized. While coast guard vessels rescued some of the migrants, few knew how to swim. The bodies floating in the surf off the Italian island of Lampadusa were a grim reminder of the desperate journey many embark on for a better life, and the often-fatal dangers they face.

While migration is no crime, the challenges of negotiating complex immigration or asylum procedures in destination countries, or transiting the complex geographical routes across inhospitable terrains leads many to seek the assistance of smuggling groups to help them navigate their passage. As a consequence, migrant smuggling is becoming all pervasive in the modern world. Migrant smuggling denotes a situation in which an individual willing contracts with a third party to be transported into another country without having formal documentation or consent to enter that country.

The demand for illicit migration is driven by the economic discrepancies between the developed and developing world. The salaries of Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia far higher than what can be earned in many developing countries. For millions of young adults facing bleak job market in low-income areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the most viable way to achieve financial success is to engage in a risky, and often unsuccessful migration to the developed world. Others, fleeing from war or oppressive governments, may have little choice but to migrate and hope for the best.

Specialized migrant smuggling organizations have arisen to cater to this demand. The market is lucrative, generating more than $6.75 billion annually for the groups involved. Migrant smuggling is often facilitated by a vast number of different groups, each specializing in moving people through one distinct geographic area. Some of the gangs are highly complex, able to supply doctored passports or maintain fleets of migrant smuggling vessels. More frequently, the smugglers are minimally organized and low tech. Successfully moving someone across a land border requires an intimate knowledge of the territory and the operational habits of border guards, creating a low bar for prospective migrant smugglers who live alongside an international border.

The largest flows of illicit migrants move via two well defined corridors: from Central America into the United States, and from Africa into Europe. The Latin America-US corridor is one of the most well-traveled illicit migration routes in the world. Migrants, mainly from Mexico, Central, and South America, along with smaller numbers of Asian and African migrants, attempt to cross Mexico’s border with the U.S. in areas that are remote yet have access to roads. Historically most the migrant smugglers in the area have been small, locally based organizations. This has shifted over the last decade, as Mexico’s powerful drug trafficking organizations have moved into the market. The UNODC Global Threat Assessment estimated that this high traffic route may be used by upwards of three million migrants every year.

The other large migration corridor extends from Africa to Europe. Routes extend from sub-Saharan Africa either across the Saharan desert and on to the North African Coast, or to the West African coast. At either of these end points, the smuggled migrants face a daunting sea voyage. From West Africa, migrants attempt to reach Spain’s Canary Islands. From North Africa, migrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean, often aiming for Italy. Historically, the number of migrants smuggled along these routes and into Europe has been a far smaller than what is seen along the US-Mexico border, but with the increasing instability in North Africa and the Sahel, these numbers have been rising exponentially. 92 migrants were recently found dead in the northern deserts towards the Libyan border, the majority of which were children. A European intelligence officer recently estimated that 3000 migrants pass through the Agadez region of Niger each week, and that represents fifty per cent of the migrants landing on the shores of Lampedusa.

Whichever route they take, smuggled migrants often face extreme danger. Once outside of their own country, they become dependent on smuggling groups for their survival. This dependence can open the smuggled individual to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the smugglers, as well as forced labour and coercive demands for money. The line between migrant smuggling and human trafficking is particularly fine. Migrants may start off a journey as willing participants, however their vulnerability can lead to their exploitation at the hands of criminal groups. Finally, corrupt security officials who control the areas migrants must pass through also frequently victimize them.

Migrant smuggling is unlikely to dissipate in the near future. Populations are continuing to grow in many nations in the developing world, creating a fierce battle for available jobs. Young adults who are financially and physically able are likely to continue to try to reach high-wage countries in North America and Europe. While for some the migration will end happily, for far too many their efforts to get a better life will lead to abuse, injury, or death in the clear waters of the Mediterranean or somewhere in the vast Sahara.

Las Jefas: The Changing Role of Women in Latin American Drug Trafficking Organizations

A presentation organized as part of the Carr Center's Working Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. Matt Herbert, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, The World Peace Foundation and PhD Candidate, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy presented: "Las Jefas: The Changing Role of Women in Latin American Drug Trafficking Organizations" this event took place on Dec. 12, 2013.