UNODC Regional Consultant for South-East Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, defined to UN Information how know-how is altering the panorama of transnational organized crime within the area.
Jeremy Douglas: Transnational organized criminals are modern, they’ve at all times used know-how to do enterprise. Nevertheless, with the acceleration of know-how, particularly cryptocurrencies, on-line gaming, markets and just lately AI, we’re seeing them rapidly undertake and use these completely different applied sciences to create new enterprise alternatives within the area.
We now have seen this particularly in relation to cash laundering, notably by casinos, a few of which perform basically as banks for prison transactions.
UN Information: What applied sciences specifically do organized crime teams use?
Jeremy Douglas: They use quite a lot of cryptocurrencies in on-line companies and markets, each on the clear public net and the darkish net, to generate and blend cash and transfer items. They use quite a lot of social media functions to market items and function numerous companies, together with drug and precursor trafficking and human trafficking. At its core, it is all about revenue, and these applied sciences enable them to generate and transfer massive quantities of cash and worth in a short time.
UN Information: How disturbing is that this improvement?
Jeremy Douglas: It’s disturbing on a number of ranges. The capabilities of organized crime teams are sometimes far forward of governments within the area, particularly much less developed international locations. And prison teams are migrating operations to areas the place they’ll exploit vulnerabilities. Will probably be an extended catch-up interval with know-how advancing and accelerating change in a complete vary of transnational crimes.
UN Information: How have these developments in know-how modified these illicit companies?
Jeremy Douglas: It relies on the illicit enterprise, however for instance, we have seen on-line marketplaces which might be fronts for human trafficking; folks purchased and offered on-line on Fb, Telegram teams and the darkish net.
Probably the most pronounced is in relation to rip-off facilities, usually positioned close to casinos, or obscure motels or guarded buildings the place folks have been trafficked for work, scams and monetary fraud. So, on this sense we’re witnessing a convergence of crimes.
Cash laundering additionally happens in new ways in which speed up the growth of illicit companies. For instance, drug trafficking with cash that circulates or is invested in casinos or reinvested in improvements within the manufacturing of medicine or the manufacturing of chemical precursors.
Basically, what we’re seeing is the supercharging of illicit economies within the Mekong sub-region of Southeast Asia.