Illicit business is big business. It covers a diverse range of activities from money laundering, drug trafficking and human trafficking through to the manufacture of counterfeit goods and the multiple activities in informal and shadow economies. This book introduces the world of illegal...

International cocaine trafficking from South America has increased significantly over the past decade. Based on mixed-methods research, we hypothesize that this change has been driven primarily by the globalization of its logistics, which has led to relevant technical and political changes along...

Efficient and interconnected logistics networks, like postal services, provide powerful tools for criminal groups to organize cross-border drug trafficking by exploiting legitimate infrastructure. Despite postal services becoming inadvertent facilitators in smuggling, focused research on this...

In recent years, gold has emerged as a preferred channel for the illicit storage and transfer of value. Despite increasing scrutiny, some illicit gold flows remain largely unexamined. This brief examines one of these: trade in gold concentrates in the maritime space. Although significant volumes...

In resource-rich African countries, the illicit trafficking of mineral resources poses a growing threat to state stability and governance. Therefore the paper investigates the effect of gold customs fraud on military spending, using a panel dataset of 50 African countries from 2000 to 2019....