More than 5,000 international Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) with more than 180 nationalities are under investigation in the European Union, says the EU’s policing agency Europol in its Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment 2017 (SOCTA).
Europol’s Director Rob Wainwright says: “The SOCTA 2017, Europol’s flagship product, represents the outcome of the largest data collection on serious and organised crime ever undertaken in the EU. Europol has been able to use its singular intelligence capability as the European information hub for criminal intelligence to analyse and identify the key crime threats facing the EU. These include cybercrime, illicit drugs, migrant smuggling, organised property crime, and the trafficking in human beings.”
The report looks at five threats:
– Cybercrime: Cybercrime is a key challenge to digital economies and societies. Cyber-dependent crime is underpinned by a mature Crime-as-a-Service model, providing easy access to the tools and services required to carry out cyber-attacks.
– Drug production, trafficking and distribution: Drug markets remain the largest criminal markets in the EU. More than one third of the criminal groups active in the EU are involved in the production, trafficking or distribution of various types of drugs. The industrial-scale production of synthetic drugs within the EU continues to expand and cements the EU as a key source region for these substances distributed worldwide.
– Migrant smuggling: Migrant smuggling has emerged as a highly profitable and widespread criminal activity for organised crime in the EU. The migrant smuggling business is now a large, profitable and sophisticated criminal market, comparable to the European drug markets.
– Organised property crime: Organised property crime encompasses a range of criminal activities carried out mainly by mobile OCGs operating across the EU. A steady increase in the number of reported burglaries over recent years is a concern in many states.
– Trafficking in human beings (THB): OCGs involved in THB often exploit existing migratory routes to traffic victims within the EU. While the migration crisis has not yet had a widespread impact on THB for labour exploitation in the EU, some investigations show that traffickers are increasingly targeting irregular migrants and asylum seekers in the EU for exploitation.
Document fraud, money laundering and the online trade in illicit goods and services are the engines of organised crime. These cross-cutting criminal threats enable and aid most, if not all, other types of serious and organised crime. The report predicts that crime groups involved in drug trafficking will likely invest in drones for trafficking, to avoid checks at border crossing points, ports and airports.
The report points to link between terrorists and other crimes. “The investigations into the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris, carried out in March 2016 and November 2015 respectively, uncovered the involvement of some of the perpetrators in different types of serious and organised crime including the trafficking of illicit drugs, as well as personal contacts with criminal groups involved in the trafficking of firearms and production of fraudulent documents.”
To read the 60-page report visit the Europol website.
