By Channing Mavrellis, April 26, 2017
In the illegal wildlife trade, like all transnational crime, the majority of participants are involved for financial gain. Retailers generally face little enforcement risk while realizing strong profits, as the value of a particular commodity, be it a wild African grey parrot or grams of bear bile, increases dramatically as it makes its way from source to market country.
By Channing Mavrellis, April 11, 2017
The groups engaged in transnational organized crime—from criminal networks to insurgent groups to terrorist organizations—are united by a common thread: money. All of the crimes covered in Global Financial Integrity’s new report Transnational Crime and the Developing World are overwhelmingly profit-motivated. Globally, transnational crime has an average annual retail value of $1.6 billion to $2.2 billion, based on 11 “industries”: counterfeiting and piracy, drug trafficking, illegal logging, human trafficking, illegal mining, illegal fishing, the illegal wildlife trade, crude oil theft, the trafficking of small arms and light weapons, the illegal organ trade, and the trafficking of cultural property.
By Tom Cardamone, April 3, 2017
Believe it or not, the Panama Papers scandal has an upside: it shed light on the dark corners of the international financial system. Prior to the revelation that one law firm helped establish over 200,000 anonymous companies, the casual observer knew tax evasion, corruption, and money laundering occur in the world but they didn’t know quite how it works. Now the term “anonymous shell company” has some resonance and it is in the general lexicon — even if most people still can’t explain how they work.