Emerging Threat

A record mismatch in official trade statistics is complicating efforts to measure how far the U.S. and China have “decoupled,” according to Bloomberg, which cited an $112-billion gap between what Beijing said it exported to the United States and what U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded as arriving.

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.

Cyber-enabled fraud is rapidly expanding in scale and sophistication as criminals exploit digital platforms, instant payments, and virtual assets to move illicit proceeds across borders, an intergovernmental watchdog said on Tuesday.  

Russian diamonds may be entering Australia through intermediaries and processing hubs despite sanctions on Moscow’s state-owned diamond giant Alrosa.

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.

A blacklisted, former Belarusian official is working with Russia to disguise the origin of agricultural products from Ukraine’s occupied territories, according to new reporting by Ukrinform. The news agency, which is Ukraine’s only national news service and is controlled by the country’s Cabinet of Ministers, said it based its reporting on documents obtained by the Belarusian opposition group […]

An IT misconfiguration has exposed an apparent network of oil traders that has helped move at least $90 billion of Russian crude and has become central to keeping export revenues flowing to the Kremlin, the Financial Times reported Friday. 

Scanned passports and other identity documents belonging to hundreds of participants in Abu Dhabi’s flagship investment conference were exposed online via an unprotected cloud server linked to Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW).

U.S. and Iranian officials are describing progress in their ongoing nuclear negotiations even as both sides accelerate visible preparations for a conflict that officials and analysts now frame as a genuine near-term risk.