Part 1 - "The Madonna of the Mountain" In Calabria, southern Italy there is a mountain massif called Aspromonte, "harsh mountain". The villages that hug the mountain slopes, places like San Luca, Natile and Platì are the birthplaces of the clans that make up what is collectively known as ‘Ndrangheta – one of the most powerful organized criminal syndicates in the world. From these humble beginnings the clans have spread their tentacles around the globe and become major players in the...

Part 2 - "I fear for my life" In 2019, journalist Lourdes Maldonado rose from her seat to speak to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a press conference - it was during this moment she said "I fear for my life" due to a long running legal dispute. Three years later, and just days after that case had been ruled in her favour, she was gunned down outside her home. Officials blamed a local cartel group, but critics were not and still are not convinced by this version of events. There is...

Part 1 - "It’s a message of terror, to stop asking questions" Mexico is known as one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist on the planet, and 2022 is on record to be the deadliest yet. José Luis Gamboa Arenas, a journalist from Veracruz became the first to be killed this year, the body of Luis Enrique Ramírez Ramos, a Sinaloan journalist was found in Culiacán on May 5th taking to total to nine. So how has Mexico got to the point where so many journalists and media workers are being...

As the net begins to close on Otoniel, life on the run is hard. Deep in the jungles of Úraba, he never stays in a single place for more than two nights, he no longer communicates using phones and he stays away from urban centres for fear of capture. But he still runs the largest organized criminal group in Colombia. One by one, other senior members of Clan del Golfo are picked off. But Otoniel continues to evade law enforcement in a constant game of cat and mouse. But now, Operation Agamemnon...

At the end of part 1, Otoniel we left him in sole charge of Clan del Golfo, the biggest organized crime group in Colombia. In part 2 "Don't text or call me", we look through the eyes of a man who goes by the alias "Messi", who was involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering for Clan del Golfo. We'll see how he used real-estate, cars, watches, front companies and government contracts to clean the drug money...as well through football, music and livestock! And finally we'll delve into...

In late 2021, the leader of Clan del Golfo (The Urabeños) Dairo Antonio Úsuga, aka "Otoniel", was captured by the Colombian police. President Iván Duque said that the arrest was only matched by the fall of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s. Over the course of two episodes we look at the birth of Clan del Golfo out of the ashes of the right-wing paramilitary movement in Colombia. We'll explore their involvement in illicit markets such as drug trafficking, illegal mining, human trafficking, sexual...

An assassination is like a stone being dropped into the middle of a still pond – the splash is the violent act itself – the ripples are the repercussions, that spread far and wide – fear, intimidation, silencing, corruption, erosion of trust, environmental damage, illicit firearms, impunity and retaliation – after all, violence begets violence – the damage to society is far-reaching, way beyond the shock of that initial killing. In November 2021, the Global Initiative against Transnational...

In this episode we look at the criminal involvement in the plastic waste industry. The lucrative global market in plastic waste is expected to be reach over $50 billion US Dollars by 2022. From Mafia groups to poly-crime networks, the temptation for organised criminal groups and bad actors to get a slice of this market is too hard to resist - and so corners are cut, laws are ignored, and irreversible damage is done. Alongside this, some waste management companies are used as Fronts to...

In this episode we tell the story of a region, the "Seven Sisters", otherwise known as the Indian Northeast and one town in particular, Moreh, and the relationship with neighbouring Myanmar. Moreh sits just on the Indian side of the border and has become a hub for multiple illicit flows that pass through - timber, gold, firearms, wildlife, counterfeits, people, and illicit drugs. The Indian Northeast is undeveloped and has suffered multiple insurgencies over the decades. Often forgotten by...

This is a story of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, complex corporate structures, human trafficking, arms smuggling, corruption and the capture of state institutions. In this collaborative episode with Africa and the Global Illicit Economy, we travel to the rich fishing grounds off Puntland in Somalia and a fleet of vessels known as the "Somali 7", before looking into a politically connected company that has an uncanny ability to operate either outside or just on the fringes...

In the wake of the 2012 'Cocaine Coup' in Guinea-Bissau the illegal logging trade exploded, largely driven by huge demand for rosewood logs in China - a species protected under international law. By 2014, such was the extent of this illicit trade, civil society pressured the new government to introduce a five-year moratorium on timber exports. Now, in 2021, as the government seems poised to lift the moratorium, there is fear that there could be a resurgence in illegal logging causing...

On March 24th 2021, Islamist insurgents carried out an attack on the coastal town of Palma in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado. The days of fighting, looting, massacres, private military contractors, and dramatic rescues led to thousands more people fleeing to escape the violence. The attack took place just a few kilometres from Total’s $20 billion-dollar natural gas project on the Afungi peninsula and in the same province as the huge ruby fields of Montepuez. Last year the...

A look at how a self-interested political and military elite used profits from illicit markets to fuel their own ambitions at the expense of the wider population. This is a story of corruption, dirty money, cocaine and illegal logging. This is Part one of a two-part special on Guinea-Bissau, the small West African nation. In this episode we will chart the course of Guinea-Bissau from Independence to the present day through the eyes of civil society organisations, who step in to fill the void...

In June 2020, EncroChat users received a flurry of panicked messages from the company claiming its encrypted network had been hacked by "government entities". What unravelled was one of the biggest hacks by law enforcement in history, who claimed many of its users are alleged organized criminals in Europe. The hack was said to have revealed a litany of criminal behaviour - drug deals and shipments, money laundering and arms trafficking, corrupt police officers, a planning of a murder and even...

With more people working from home than ever before due to the pandemic,. But another parallel pandemic is taking place, that of online child sexual abuse material which has taken a sharp rise around the world. In this podcast, we’re discussing Child Online Sexual Abuse (CSAM), COVID and technology. Presenter(s): Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo and Jack Meegan-Vickers. Speakers: Fernando Ruiz, Head of Operations at the European Cybercrime Centre, set up by Europol to co-ordinate crossborder...

In this podcast, Jack is looking at the latest Global Initative Against Transnational Organized Crime report called 'Under the Shadow: Illicit Economies in Iran', which looks at how the illicit economy has become intertwined within the licit economy of the Iranian State. Speakers Alexander Soderholm, an international drug policy field researcher with a focus on Iran and the Middle East. Katherine Bauer, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former US Treasury...

In the Northern Triangle countries of Central America - Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, extortion is so pervasive that it has been called “A way of life”. The growth in extortion in the region was defined by the expansion of street gangs MS13 and Barrio 18. They have a stranglehold on the countries in which they operate, extorting rich and poor and even international corporations. The revenue from extortion has provided gangs in the region with a solid economic operating base, and at the...

Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime. The Western Balkans is well understood now as an important transit point for the smuggling of drugs, arms and people. But what has been less understood is how over the past few decades, criminal groups within the Western Balkans region and the global diaspora have carved out a place within the very highest echelons of the criminal world. Paper: https://globalinitiative.net/transnational-tentacles-wb6/ (Transnational...

https://globalinitiative.net/oc-trafficking-deforestation-mexico/ (People and Forests at Risk: Organized Crime, trafficking in persons and deforestation in Chihuahua, Mexico.) The highland ranges of the Sierra Madre are cool and temperate forests – with several species of Oak, conifers and a number of pines, and logging is permitted here. But excessive legal and illegal logging is contributing to rapid deforestation. Organized criminal groups have established their position within the...

How will the ongoing violent Islamist insurgency in the Cabo Delgado region of Northern Mozambique overlap with the organized criminal networks that operate in the area. How has the corruption within the Mozambican state contributed to the growth of the insurgency? Presenter: https://twitter.com/lindymtongana?lang=en (Lindy Mtongana) Guests: https://twitter.com/adriano_nuvunga?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor (Professor Adriano Nuvunga), Director of the Centre for...

Destruction or Theft? Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State group occupied territory in Iraq. At it's height it controlled almost a third of the country and over 4,500 historical sites. Alongside the dramatic pictures of the destruction of artefacts and irreplaceable ancient sites like Nimrud, others have claimed that this destruction was largely carried out to conceal extensive looting of valuable artefacts. Presenters: Laura Adal and Jack Meegan-Vickers Guests:...