#transnational-crime

#transnational-crime

Guo, who served as mayor of a town north of Manila, was found guilty of overseeing a Chinese-operated online gambling centre where hundreds of people were forced to run scams or risk torture. The sprawling complex which included office buildings, luxury villas and a large swimming pool was raided in March 2024 after a Vietnamese worker escaped and called police. More than 700 Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Indonesians and Rwandans were found on site, along with documents allegedly showing that Guo was president of a company that owned the compound.

Spanish police have detained 13 suspected members of Venezuela's notorious Tren de Aragua crime gang, which has increasingly come under scrutiny as the United States actively targets and kills what it says are its cadres smuggling drugs on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The arrests were made across five Spanish cities, police said on Friday. The gang was designated as a global terrorist organisation by the US earlier this year.

TOWSON, MARYLAND - Inside a suburban Maryland gas station, the Secret Service's Vincent Porter runs his fingers over a card reader in front of a clerk, hunting for signs that the terminal has been hijacked by thieves. The financial analyst is feeling for the plastic overlay of a skimmer, an electronic device used to exploit the half-century-old card technology still used to deliver benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps over 41 million Americans pay for food each month.

Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates running scam centres such as KK Park, which use enslaved workers to run complex online fraud and scamming schemes that generate huge profits. For them, money is more important than human life Trafficking victim There have been some attempts to crack down on the centres and rescue the workers, who can be subjected to torture and trapped inside.

But Myanmar's civil war is not just a humanitarian catastrophe-it's a geopolitical fault line. The protracted conflict has displaced 2.6 million people, fueled transnational arms and drug networks, and drawn in outside powers like China and Russia-yet it remains largely absent from international policy debates. Analysts warn that continued neglect could destabilize Southeast Asia for years to come, potentially empowering malign actors across the region.

Anwar Ibrahim reflects on his leadership role in ASEAN, emphasizing the need to address rising transnational crime and Malaysia's ongoing struggles with the 1MDB scandal.