Crime is becoming more globalized, with organized crime groups increasingly collaborating and entering into a wider range of criminal markets. As transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) grow and become more profitable, they have also become more influential. Rising global influence means that more industries are grappling with the impacts of transnational crime. As such, risks to corporations have intensified, increasingly impacting supply chains, finances and operations. To better understand this threat landscape and how companies can best protect themselves, RANE spoke with Andrej Bastar of Brasidas Group AG, Jacob Sims of Operation Shamrock, James Bosworth of Hxagon and Joshua Skule of Bow Wave LLC.

The experts RANE spoke with identified three main trends that characterize the transnational criminal ecosystem in today's world: TCOs are increasingly collaborating with each other.

1. TCOs are increasingly collaborating with each other.
2. TCOs are increasingly expanding operations into multiple criminal markets.
3. There is increasing state involvement in transnational crime and an increasing prevalence of transnational crime in the public sector.

Trend Alert: Increasing Collaboration and Confluence

‍Bosworth tells RANE that "because these groups are businesses, they collaborate with each other, even when they compete with each other." Sims reiterates this, pointing to a broader trend of a "confluence of multiple forms of organized crime coming together." He says, "we are noticing that network alignment is occurring." This means that major industries of crime, like the drug trade and the cybercrime market, or the drug trade and the illegal mining trade, are increasingly working together for mutual benefit. Sims offers an explanation for this phenomenon, saying that "as the supply chains and value chains of these types of crime become longer and longer, it requires a more sophisticated set of operators to run it successfully."

‍Sims says this means that as the drug trade and cybercrime converge, for example, the groups need not only "cultivators, mules, smuggling networks and dealers that span the entire world" to facilitate the drug trade, but also cybercrime requires personnel to recruit workers and transport them across the world, along with agents to be involved in the money laundering process for both markets. He further elaborates that "it [requires] lots of different types of specialized actors that are operating over a really wide territory. And so the number of people capable of scaling these sorts of activities is really small." Sims says that because of this, "it just makes sense that they are all starting to work together." With this increasing collaboration, Skule says that it is important to recognize "that crime is globalized more than it ever has been."

Trend Alert: Expanding into Different Types of Crime

Bastar tells RANE that "especially as of early 2025," there has been "a convergence of different illicit markets, state actors and emerging technologies." He elaborates that "these different TCOs are blending trafficking, cybercrime, financial fraud and legal commercial operations." Bastar says this represents a shift, "where before they were specialized, they operate more now in a hybridized model." Bosworth notes that some groups remain highly specialized but acknowledges that many of these groups "have multiple fronts." For example, Bosworth explains that major drug traffickers are not only profiting from drug trafficking but also making a lot of money from local extortion and human trafficking, with drugs only representing a third of their business model despite being characterized as a drug cartel. Bastar explains this trend by saying that this model "enhances their profit diversification and enhances their resilience." For example, Bastar points to Balkan cartel alliances like the Kavac and Skaljari clans in Montenegro, which he says have "diversified from cocaine logistics into cyber fraud, crypto laundering and arms trafficking." Moreover, these groups use shell companies registered largely in Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands "to channel both illicit proceeds and investment capital."

Trend Alert: Increasing State Involvement and Increasing Infiltration of the Public Sector

When asked about major trends, Sims points to the "increasing centralization of state involvement." He mentions Cambodia as a prime example of how this is occurring with human trafficking to cyber scam compounds. In September, the United States sanctioned Ly Yong Phat, a powerful Cambodian billionaire, senator and business partner to the Cambodian president, for his alleged role in trafficking forced labor to these scam centers. Referencing this case, Sims says that Cambodia is "emblematic" of growing state involvement in transnational crime, "where there is top-to-bottom state actor involvement not only in accepting bribes, but in actually perpetrating the crime and seemingly welcoming this into their country."

This growing collusion between state actors and transnational crime contributes to the growing influence and power of these groups, with Skule noting that the extremely lucrative nature of these industries leads to "actors that rival governments" in terms of money and capability. Specifically, Skule points to the growing counterintelligence capabilities, access to arms, and the influence and political status of these groups. While not perpetrated by a state actor, in a related example, Bastar speaks to organized criminal groups' growing infiltration into EU infrastructure and the criminal capture of the public procurement process. Bastar notes the growing presence of criminal groups in state-owned entities like port infrastructure, transportation, utility sectors and green energy, all of which pose legal risks for EU companies that may inadvertently become linked to criminal groups or caught up in criminal schemes.

Hotspots and Markets: Where Transnational Crime is Expanding Most Rapidly

Experts told RANE that transnational crime has surged in Ecuador, Southeast Asia, and Southern and Eastern Europe. The Balkans remain a key facilitator, with Chinese organized crime groups playing an increasing role globally. Bosworth calls Ecuador a "hot spot" where "murders have tripled in the last five years" as a result of foreign, rival transnational criminal groups entering the country. He says, "it is now one of the most violent countries in the world, and it was not that way five, six years ago." To help explain this, Bosworth notes that Ecuador is not a major cocaine producer on its own, but its neighbors, Colombia and Peru, are the two main producers in the world, "so cocaine is trying to find its way out via ports." To make matters worse, he says,"Albanian gangs have entered the [cocaine] market" in Ecuador.

This means that criminal groups across the continent are coming into Ecuador and fighting over cocaine exports at the same time that Albanian groups are expanding geographically to operate in Latin America in addition to Europe. Historically, cocaine would come into the Balkans, and the Albanians would move the product around Europe. Now, however, Bosworth says that "Albanians took control of part of the supply chain that they did not control before" to get bigger profit margins, exacerbating the security situation in Ecuador and underscoring both the larger trend of how TCOs are expanding into different markets, along with the role of the Balkans as a key facilitator of transnational crime. Looking forward, Bosworth says that "Peru is the next Ecuador."

With the expansion of Albanian gangs into Latin America, the Balkans continue to act as a "critical facilitator region," as Bastar puts it, helping to enable heightened crime in Southern and Eastern Europe in particular. Bastar says that the Balkans is a "convergence point for a number of these underground economies," with a legacy of conflict and institutional corruption helping to support its role as a "transit corridor" linking Turkey and the Middle East to the European Union. Bastar says that while the Balkans are "not necessarily the source of the crime," they nonetheless see "everything from human trafficking to cocaine logistics and heroin trafficking, arms smuggling, cybercrime and money laundering." As such, coupled with government corruption, Bastar says that "the biggest issue or zone that we see is Southern Eastern Europe." Here, Bastar says that TCOs are "embedding themselves into ports and border towns across Southeast Europe, using corruption and coercion to control logistic hubs and get access to infrastructure," underscoring the broader trend of TCOs increasingly infiltrating the public sector.

Beyond Europe and Latin America, Sims says that "one of the biggest explosions of that crime in recent years has been cybercrime or transnational scams that have emerged out of Southeast Asia and predominantly concentrated within Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos." As they gain attention internationally in these areas, Sims notes that this type of criminal enterprise is popping up in other areas as well, but that Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos "are still the epicenter." These scam compounds are run largely by criminal networks originating from China and often with coordination from local criminal organizations. While Sims notes an expansion in these operations from China-based criminal networks, Bastar also highlights an uptick and growing role of Chinese organized crime groups in Europe that are engaging in counterfeit production and crypto money laundering using small and medium-sized businesses, as well as environmental crime like illegal logging, mining, wildlife trafficking, waste dumping and carbon credit frauds. Bastar says these groups' "operations intersect with the Latin American cocaine logistics and Africa smuggling routes," underscoring the increasingly globalized and interconnected nature of crime.

‍Bastar points to a wide array of criminal markets that have grown in recent years, including ransomware and cybercrime enabled by greater digitization, environmental crime like illegal logging, money laundering, counterfeit and fraudulent goods, and sanctions evasion or dual-use goods smuggling, which has been brought on amid geopolitical conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine war. Data from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime echoes Bastar's insights, with the Global Organized Crime Index showing that its scores to assess criminality increased in every criminal market between 2021-23. Human smuggling and the synthetic drug trade represented the largest increases for the Global Organized Crime Index. This data underscores points from Bosworth and Skule, who both comment on a marked increase in the fentanyl and synthetic drug trade. Skule says that "for more than a decade, [there has been] a flood of fentanyl coming over from Mexico," into the United States. Bosworth notes that the shift from plant-based drugs to synthetic drugs has dramatically changed the nature of transnational crime in Latin America, with groups that were previously growing opium and heroin in Afghanistan and Mexico no longer making the same kind of profits.

Instead, Bosworth says that this has shifted with "precursor chemicals coming from places like China and India." Meanwhile, Bastar sheds light on the dual-use goods smuggling market, saying that in recent years, this industry has been highly active in bringing goods to Russia, Iran and North Korea, with Turkey, Armenia, the Emirates and others in Central Asia often used as the intermediate countries. Additionally, Bastar notes that the Balkans are typically used as a node for dual-use goods smuggling, "very often via Serbia." Bastar also points to Iranian procurement groups that are launching from Lebanon and Syria as a way of evading sanctions, with a "touch point in the Balkans," along with nodes in Germany, the Netherlands and France.

What Will Drive Future Changes in the Transnational Criminal Ecosystem?

Experts cited weak rule of law, ongoing conflict and the gambling industry as major drivers of transnational crime. Bosworth says that "weak rule of law creates openings for organized crime to come in." He elaborates that it often begins with moving things across borders for profit before cascading into different types of crime. Relatedly, Bastar points towards conflict as an enabler of weak rule of law, saying that "conflict drives sanctions evasion and dual-use goods smuggling and weakened rule of law that can further enable transnational crime." Sims reiterates these thoughts, noting that Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos are epicenters of crime because they exhibit the "perfect storm" of factors like degraded rule of law, along with "large populations of vulnerable people seeking jobs." Similarly, Sims notes how gambling plays a role, saying that "the gray market of the gambling industry provides criminals with a wealth of opportunities to scale their operations." Specifically, he points to "the cash nature of the business and the easily explainable gains and losses," which "makes it ideal if you are already embedded in those networks to transfer it into illicit flows." Sims elaborates that a "24/7 cash business where no one asks questions when large amounts of money are moving in and out" makes gambling "the perfect mixer in terms of a money laundering instrument."

To think about future trends in transnational crime, Bosworth also says that "the price of gold matters." For example, "when the price of cocaine drops and the price of gold goes up, gold becomes more profitable than cocaine, and illegal mining becomes much more profitable than illegal drug trafficking." Like other drivers of transnational crime, this factor can be helpful for organizations to think about in terms of identifying areas where they may be most vulnerable to the impacts of transnational crime and for planning for a projected increase in the types of crime that impact their organizations the most or the least.

How are Industries Impacted?

While Skule says every organization "has a risk at some point of being involved with organized criminal elements," some industries are at a higher risk than others. Bosworth says that any organization with fixed assets is at a higher risk because "when you have fixed assets, you're very vulnerable to extortion." Further explaining this phenomenon, Bosworth gives the example of mining – a highly vulnerable sector to organized crime – saying, "the mines can't move, and therefore, the group that controls the mining sector can extort that mining company." This applies not only to extractive industries, including agriculture, but also to large-scale manufacturing. Beyond this, our experts highlighted the financial sector, logistics and transportation, industrial machinery and tech exporters, and the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors as most at risk. Here is what they had to say about each of these sectors:

• Financial Sector: Bosworth says that "financial companies face organized crime wherever they go" because organized crime, first and foremost, "is a business." He elaborates to say, "every financial company… is going to have to deal with the fact that there are financial flows that are connected to illicit groups." Bastar points more specifically to financial services' exposure to complex money laundering schemes using shell companies and crypto exchanges, which he says "increases the regulatory and reputational risks for financial institutions."
• Logistics and Transportation: Bosworth notes that logistics is both targeted for cargo theft and exploited for the transport of weapons, drugs, money or people. Meanwhile, Bastar says that the global shipping and logistics industry is at risk as TCOS "are corrupting port workers or freight forwarding companies." Bastar also remarks that illicit goods are often concealed in legitimate exports, opening up shipping companies to legal risks if implicated in criminal activity.
• Industrial Machinery and Tech Exporters: Bastar says that industrial machinery and tech exporters are particularly at risk due to the dual-use goods smuggling industry. TCOs will use front companies, particularly in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia and the Emirates, to falsify documents and reexport goods into sanctioned jurisdictions. Then, they​​ will use free trade zones and complex shipping routes to obscure end users.
• Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sector: Amid the rise in synthetic drugs, Bastar highlights growing risks to the chemical and pharmaceutical sector as dual-use chemicals are diverted to meth and MDMA production labs that, in Europe, are concentrated in the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Spain. Bastar also says that active precursor ingredients from China and India are also used for counterfeit pharma production.