Evictions and Evasions: State Involvement in Southeast Asia’s ‘Golden Era of Organized Crime’

As global attention on Southeast Asia’s transnational crime epidemic continues to increase, the sophistication of analysis on it is rising in sync. Last month’s U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime report is an exemplar of this trend, its all-star team of authors setting a new standard for publicly available intelligence on the underground banking system and the myriad technological innovations underpinning “the most powerful criminal network of the modern era.” The 142-page report packs in a stunning volume of information on how these criminal networks are leveraging existing infrastructure and adapting to market, regulatory, and enforcement efforts to disrupt their activities. As with UNODC’s January 2024 report on the region’s underground banking sector, this report centers the role of the gambling industry as the primary vehicle for laundering the magnificent proceeds of a true “golden era of organized crime.” Its most significant contribution is a compelling demonstration of how physical casino infrastructure operates as a legal, fiscal, and regulatory shield, allowing for the co-mingling of funds from different sources and rendering the predicate crimes and perpetrators impossible to trace. The states at the culpable epicenter of this wave of criminal activity are explicitly characterized as having been “targeted as a key testing ground for transnational criminal networks looking to expand their influence and diversify into new business lines” – completely avoiding any mention of state actions that may have directly encouraged that “targeting.” Similarly, the crime wave is presented as primarily a technical hurdle to overcome, with the “situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it.” Side-stepping the fundamentally political nature of the problem, the report’s recommendations hinge primarily on the need to build up the regulatory and enforcement capacity in those countries where the crimes are taking place, as well as more regionally. The bleak conclusion we should draw from UNODC’s tour-de-force report is that “Un-named Companies A-Z” and “Un-named Countries 1-3” are highly unlikely to divest themselves in the near term from their most lucrative criminal investments.