Organized Crime

Germany will overhaul its core federal security agencies and deploy artificial intelligence as part of a crackdown on organized crime, related money laundering, and other financial crimes, Reuters reported Wednesday. 

Waste crime and trafficking is expanding globally, fueled by profit incentives in a fast-growing waste-management industry and compounded by major blind spots in official data, according to a newly released report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 

Australia’s booming cocaine consumption among affluent professionals has helped turn the country into the world’s unlikely cocaine capital, fueling criminal networks linked to murder, human trafficking, and extortion.

A 42-year-old American citizen suspected by French investigators of leading a vast international money laundering network known as “Dark Bank” has been extradited from the United States to France, Le Monde reported.

A surge in gold and silver prices is drawing organized-crime groups to Mexico’s mining sector, forcing companies to absorb rising security costs and, in some cases, make “protection” payments or use suppliers linked to criminal groups.

There has been visible discontent with Albania’s government in recent weeks, with protestors hurling petrol bombs at government buildings and calling out Prime Minister Edi Rama by name.

Crime boss Kazem Hamad has taken a major financial stake in the Manchester tobacco company in Dubai, cementing his cartel’s control over Australia’s illicit cigarette market from manufacturing and smuggling through to retail sales in suburban shops.

Trade misinvoicing may have siphoned roughly $3.64 trillion in illicit value out of the Western hemisphere over the decade from 2013 to 2022, with annual “trade value gaps” climbing to a new high of about $473.2 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI). 

Drug cartels and other criminal groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies and a growing “gig” workforce of freelance brokers and couriers to launder cash and evade law enforcement, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

Criminal syndicates operating scam centers in Southeast Asia are adopting inexpensive artificial-intelligence tools to widen their reach and keep operations running even as governments intensify crackdowns, senior Interpol officials told Bloomberg.