Transnational organized crime continues to grow in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated global counter-strategy. Havocscope.com estimates world illicit trade to be over $1 trillion per year, with counterfeiting and piracy at $533 billion, the global drug trade at $322 billion, trade in environmental goods at $57 billion, human trafficking at $44 billion, consumer products at $60 billion, and weapons trade at $10 billion. McAfee adds cybercrime at $105 billion. These figures do not include extortion or organized crime’s part of the $1 trillion in bribes that the World Bank estimates is paid annually or its part of the estimated $1.5–6.5 trillion in laundered money. Hence the total income could be well over $2 trillion—about twice all the military budgets in the world. Governments can be understood as a series of decision points, with some people in those points vulnerable to very large bribes. Decisions could be bought and sold like heroin, making democracy an illusion.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is giving priority to human trafficking, corruption, and reducing demand for drugs. There are more than 27 million people held in slavery today (the vast majority in Asia), far more than during the peak of the African slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked every year. The online market in illegally obtained data and tools for committing data theft and other cybercrimes continue to grow. Computer transfers of $2 trillion per day make tempting targets for international cyber criminals. Prescription drug abuse exceeds the use of conventional illegal drugs in many areas, and counterfeiting of these compounds brings additional revenue to TOC.

OECD’s Financial Action Task Force has made 40 recommendations to counter money laundering, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called for national integrated strategies and created the Global Program against Money Laundering. Nevertheless, TOC continues to grow and has not surfaced on the world agenda in the way that poverty, water, and global warming have. It is time for an international campaign by all sectors of society to develop a global consensus for action against TOC, which has grown to the point where it is increasingly interfering with the ability of governments to act. The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called on all states to develop a coherent strategy to counter TOC as a whole, but efforts still focus on pieces of the problem. INTERPOL’s 186 member countries can now directly access the organization’s central database management system (I-link), speeding investigations and cooperation.

Two Conventions help bring some coherence to addressing TOC: the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which came into force in 2003, and the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, which came into force in May 2008. Possibly an addition to one of these conventions or the International Criminal Court could establish a financial prosecution system as a new body to complement the related organizations addressing various parts of TOC. In cooperation with these organizations, the new system would identify and establish priorities on top criminals (defined by the amount of money laundered) to be prosecuted one at a time. It would prepare legal cases, identify suspects’ assets that can be frozen, establish the current location of the suspect, assess the local authorities’ ability to make an arrest, and send the case to one of a number of preselected courts. Such courts, like UN peacekeeping forces, could be identified before being called into action and trained, and then be ready for instant duty. When all these conditions are met, then all the orders would be executed at the same time to apprehend the criminal, freeze access to the assets, open the court case, and then proceed to the next TOC leader on the priority list. Prosecution would be outside the accused’s country. Although extradition is accepted by the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, a new protocol would be necessary for courts to be deputized like military forces for UN peacekeeping, via a lottery system among volunteer countries. After initial government funding, the system would receive its financial support from frozen assets of convicted criminals rather than depending on government contributions for continued operations.

Challenge 12 will be seriously addressed when money laundering and crime income sources drop by 75% from their peak.