Deep Dive: Exploring Organized Crime

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 left by

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 the

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.SpeakersAlexander 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 same

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: Transnational Tentacles: Global Hotspots of Balkan Organized Crime.Guests:Walter Kemp,

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 illegal logging trade, with them comes violence, corruption, kidnapping, extortion,