Organized crime gangs in Southeast Asia are migrating operations to remote areas of the region where the rule of law is absent and are using technology to lead what a senior official at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is calling the "supercharging of illicit economies", including expanding the trafficking of drugs and people as well as money laundering and fraudulent 'scam' activities.
UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Jeremy Douglas, explained to UN News how technology is changing the landscape of transnational organized crime in the region.
Jeremy Douglas: Transnational organized criminals are innovators, they have always used technology to do business. However, with the acceleration of technology, particularly cryptocurrencies, online gaming, marketplaces and recently AI, we're seeing that they are quickly adopting and using these different technologies to create new business opportunities in the region.
We've seen this most particularly when it comes to money laundering, especially through casinos, some of which are fundamentally operating as banks for criminal transactions.
UN News: What technologies in particular are organized crime groups using?
Jeremy Douglas: They're using a variety of cryptocurrencies in online businesses and marketplaces, both on the publicly accessible clear web and the dark web, to generate and mix money, and to move commodities. They're using a range of social media apps to market goods and to operate different businesses, including the trafficking of drugs and precursors, and for human trafficking. At the core it's all about profit, and these technologies allow them to generate and move large amounts of money and value very quickly.
UN News: How troubling is this development?
Jeremy Douglas: It's troubling on many levels. The capacities of organized crime groups are often far ahead of the governments in the region, particularly of the less developed countries. And criminal groups are migrating operations to locations where they can capitalize on vulnerabilities. It's going to be a long period of catch-up with the technology advancing and accelerating change in a whole range of transnational crimes.
UN News: How have these developments in technology changed these illicit businesses?
Jeremy Douglas: It depends on the illicit business, but, for example, we've seen online marketplaces that are fronts for trafficking in human beings; people being bought and sold online on Facebook, in Telegram groups and in the dark web.
It is most pronounced is in relation to the scam centres, often located alongside casinos, or obscure hotels or guarded buildings where people have been trafficked to work cyber-enabled scams and financial fraud. So, in this sense we are seeing a convergence of crimes.
Money laundering is also taking place in new ways which are accelerating the expansion of illicit businesses. For example, the trafficking of drugs with money moving through or being invested in casinos or reinvested into innovations in drug production or precursor chemical production.
Fundamentally, what we are seeing is the supercharging of illicit economies within the Mekong subregion of Southeast Asia.
