By James Blitz in London
Published: Last updated: June 17 2010 19:43
International crime networks now enjoy such an extensive reach that the gangs behind them must be regarded as a significant economic power, says a United Nations report.
In one of the most comprehensive analyses undertaken of transnational criminal activity, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has calculated that the illicit trade in a range of commodities – including drugs, people, arms, fake goods and stolen natural resources – has an annual value of roughly $130bn.
The report shows how transnational crime continues to be dominated by the trade in cocaine and heroin, a business whose product is worth about $105bn a year.
But it suggests that other criminal activities – including the trafficking of natural resources, product counterfeiting and maritime piracy – are becoming of increasing concern to the international community.
One of the report’s main purposes is to persuade world powers to think harder about how they can combat the illicit trade in goods and people.
“Transnational crime has become a threat to peace and development, even to the sovereignty of nations,” says Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC’s executive director. “Today, the criminal market spans the planet: illicit goods are sourced from one continent, trafficked across another, and marketed in a third.”
Mr Costa says transnational crime has become so intense that it risks undermining a number of states, most notably in Africa. The world’s big powers are showing “benign neglect” towards a problem that is hurting everyone, “especially poor countries that are not able to defend themselves”.
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Cocaine trafficking from the Andean region to North America, a business with an annual value of $38bn at destination, is the biggest sector in the illegal narcotics trade. The export of cocaine from the Andean region to Europe is worth about $34bn a year.
However, the UNODC believes that the North American cocaine market is shrinking because of lower demand and greater law enforcement. It says this has generated a turf war among trafficking gangs, particularly in Mexico, and prompted them to forge new drug routes.
By contrast, the heroin trade from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe – worth $33bn a year – remains strong. The UNODC says heroin kills 30,000 to 40,000 young Russians a year – twice the number of Red Army soldiers killed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The second-biggest sector in international organised crime is people-trafficking. The trade in women for sexual exploitation is now worth about $3bn a year. Much of the trade involves trafficking people from Africa and the Balkans to other parts of Europe, where about 140,000 women are being manipulated by gangs at any one time.
The illegal smuggling of economic migrants is worth about $6.6bn a year to those who run the trade, according to the report.
The dominant illegal migrant flow is across the southern border of the US, with about 3m Latin Americans illegally moving to North America each year. Flows from Africa to Europe are far smaller, with about 55,000 migrants smuggled into Europe in 2008.
The trade in fake manufactured goods has an estimated value of $8.2bn, based on European seizures and consumer surveys, and the annual trade in counterfeit medicines is worth $1.6bn.
The report estimates that illicit wood products imported from Asia to the European Union and China were worth $2.5bn last year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
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