Deep Dive: Exploring Organized Crime

In the wake of the 2012 'Cocaine Coup' in Guinea-Bissau the illegal logging trade exploded, largely driven by huge demand for rosewood logs in China - a species protected under international law.

By 2014, such was the extent of this illicit trade, civil society pressured the new government to introduce a five-year moratorium on timber exports.

Now, in 2021, as the government seems poised to lift the moratorium, there is fear that there could be a resurgence in illegal logging causing irreparable damage to the environment.

Guests

Obento Branco Catami (Regional Delegate for Forestry and Wildlife in the Cacheu region).

Ude Fati (Economist, Head of Voz di Paz)

Fodé Mané (University of Bissau) 

Tânia Gomes (President of the Association of Friends of Guinea-Bissau)

Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo, Senior Analyst, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Reading

Deep-rooted interests: Licensing illicit logging in Guinea Bissau

Authorized Plunder in Guinea-Bissau - Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)

Breaking the vicious cycle: Cocaine politics in Guinea-Bissau

The Seidi Bá cocaine trial: A smokescreen for impunity?

Presenter: Jack Meegan-Vickers

On March 24th 2021, Islamist insurgents carried out an attack on the coastal town of Palma in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado. The days of fighting, looting, massacres, private military contractors, and dramatic rescues led to thousands more people fleeing to escape the violence.

The attack took place just a few kilometres from Total’s $20 billion-dollar natural gas project on the Afungi peninsula and in the same province as the huge ruby fields of Montepuez.

Last year the Global Initiative asked how this ongoing insurgency is impacting the illicit flows that travel through the region – after the attack at Palma, we have decided to revisit this subject.

This is a collaborative episode between Africa and the Global Illicit Economy and Deep Dive: Exploring Organized Crime.

Presenter: Lindy Mtongana

Speakers:

Prof. Adriano Nuvunga – Director of the CDD Mozambique

Zenaida Machado – Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch

Alastair Nelson – Senior Fellow, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Johann Smith – Independent Security Analyst in Mozambique

Colonel Lionel Dyck – CEO of the of Dyck Advisory Group (DAG)

Reading:

Observatory of Illicit Economies in Eastern and Southern Africa – Risk Bulletin Issue. 17

A Triangle of Vulnerability: Changing patterns of illicit trafficking off the Swahili coast

Podcast: Deep Dive: Exploring Organized Crime – Insurgency and illicit trade in Northern Mozambique

'Criminals and Terrorists': Framing Mozambique's Insurgency - OCCRP

Hundreds Missing After Mozambique Attack: Government Should Provide More Information About Situation in Palma

Amnesty International: Mozambique: Civilians killed as war crimes committed by armed group, government forces, and private military contractors.

Producer: Jack Meegan-Vickers

Global Initiative Against Transnational 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 an absent state. 

Guests

Augusto Mário (Pres. GNB Human Rights League)

Ude Fati (Economist, Head of Voz di Paz)

Fodé Mané (University of Bissau) 

Rui Landim (Political Analyst)

Augusta Henriques (founder of Tiniguena, civil society activist) 

Reading

Breaking the vicious cycle: Cocaine politics in Guinea-Bissau

The Seidi Bá cocaine trial: A smokescreen for impunity?

Mission not accomplished?: UNIOGBIS closes amid uncertainty in Guinea-Bissau

CPJ - Guinea-Bissau editor António Aly Silva abducted and beaten

Presenter: Jack Meegan-Vickers

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 discovery of a torture chamber, hidden within a shipping container.

But was the hack even legal? And what are the implications for the encrypted communications that many of us use everyday?

This podcast was based on the reporting of Joseph Cox at Motherboard, VICE News.

Guests:

Joseph Cox, Senior Staff Writer at Motherboard, VICE News.

Jake Moore, Cyber Security Specialist at ESET.

Edouard Klein, Intelligence-Driven Cybersecurity, Sekoia.fr

Tuesday Reitano, Deputy Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Reading:

How Police Secretly Took Over a Global Phone Network for Organized Crime, Motherboard

Encrochat Investigation Finds Corrupt Cops Leaking Information to Criminals, Motherboard

Encrypted Phone Network Says It's Shutting Down After Police Hack, Motherboard

Europol, Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA) 2020

Al Jazeera, Opinion: The EncroChat police hacking sets a dangerous precedent

ComputerWeekly.com - Berlin court finds EncroChat intercept evidence cannot be used in criminal trials

ComputerWeekly.com - Secrecy around EncroChat cryptophone hack breaches French constitution, court hears

Presenter: Jack Meegan-Vickers

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

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 investigations into cybercrime.

Amela Efendic is the director of the European Resource Centre for the Prevention of Trafficking and head of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Office for the International Forum for Solidarity-Emmaus.

Judie Kaberia is a fellow of the 2020 Resilience Fund of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

GI Research Paper: Transformative Technologies: How digital is changing the landscape of organized crime.

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

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.

Speakers

Alexander 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 official.

Naysan Rafati, the Senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group

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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 time allowed them to diversify into other criminal enterprises – they are now transnational organized criminal groups.

Presenter: Jack Meegan-Vickers

Speakers:

1.      Guillermo Vazquez del Mercado Almada, Senior Analyst, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

2.      Evelyn Espinosa, Research Adviser at Diálogos

3.      Pamela Ruiz, Consultant at the Coalition for Resilience Project and member of the GI Network of Experts.

4.      Professor Lucia Dammert, University of Santiago, Chile and member of the GI Network of Experts.

GI Extortion Project

Paper: A Criminal Culture: Extortion in Central America

Other content available at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime website.

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, Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Fatjona Mejdini, Field Network Coordinator, Balkans at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Susana Morán, investigative journalist in Ecuador specialising in organized crime

Mandy Wiener, journalist, broadcaster and author of Killing Kebble: An Underworld Exposed

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, displacement of indigenous communities and persecution of environmental and human-rights defenders.

Presenters: Livia Wagner and Jack Meegan-Vickers

Guests:

Diana Siller, co-author of the paper and Director of JADE (Environmental Justice and human rights in Mexico)

Julia Urrunaga, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international NGO who investigate forest and environmental crimes.

Sound Effects: Freesfx

How will the ongoing violent Islamist insurgency in the Cabo Delgado region of Northern Mozambique overlap with the organized criminal networks that operate in the area. How has the corruption within the Mozambican state contributed to the growth of the insurgency?

Presenter: Lindy Mtongana

Guests:

Professor Adriano Nuvunga, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development and a leading civil society activist in Mozambique

Simone Haysom, Senior Analyst, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, researching the role of foreign organised crime groups in Africa.

Alastair Nelson, Senior Analyst who Coordinates the GI’s Resilience Fund work in Mozambique

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime