Worldwide organized crime gained profits amounting to $870 billion announced on Monday in Vienna Yuri Fedotov, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported AFP. The official also urged a better coordination between states to combat this scourge.
“We can assess the value of transnational organized crime in the amount of $870 billion,” Fedotov said in a press conference on the topic in Vienna. “We can not evaluate, however, the suffering and misery that these illegal activities produce to millions of people,” he continued.
Leaders of organized crime are “intelligent, well-informed and opportunistic,” said UNODC head after calling for better cooperation between states to combat these criminal organizations that are highly flexible.
About 800 ministers and civil society representatives take part for a week in the Austrian capital at a conference on the fight against transnational organized crime. On the other hand, UNODC presented on Tuesday a new tool to help countries fight organized crime, said Fedotov, together with Italian Interior Minister Annamaria Cancelleri.
This study on organized crime is based on the analysis of over 200 cases and knowledge of over 50 experts. It was developed in cooperation between the UN Office, Italian and Colombian governments and Interpol.
This tool will allow countries to understand the different experiences in the fight against organized crime and integrate them into their strategies against criminals and their networks.
“Groups of organized crime are engaged in various criminal activities on a number of markets. Drug trafficking is an important example, but it is also about human trafficking and cultural goods, about computer crime and piracy,” said Fedotov at the presentation of this tool in Vienna at the UNODC headquarters.
“In order to effectively combat the organized crime, countries should fully dismantle a criminal organization, to sentence its leaders, to deprive them of illegal profits and prevent money laundering,” added the head of the UN Office.
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