Arya News - The report noted that organised crime has shifted from trafficking physical goods to selling services that leave little trace and are far harder to seize or attribute to any single actor.
PHNOM PENH – The criminal ecosystem in Southeast Asia has undergone a fundamental restructuring, from once-fragmented, locally rooted syndicates into a single transnational, tech-driven criminal economy sophisticated enough to outpace conventional law enforcement, according to according to a new UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report released today, July 21.
The “An Interconnected Criminal Ecosystem: Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment for South-East Asia 2026” report highlighted how criminals are weaving different types of crime into a single, shared financial and operational infrastructure that is allowing for an increasingly thriving crime ecosystem. The development threatens governance, economic stability and development in the region and beyond.
“What we are seeing is a shift in which groups that stayed within their own geographic domain and criminal specialty are now operating across multiple illicit markets at once, relying on the same service streams,” explained Delphine Schantz, UNODC regional representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific.
“Their operating model looks like corporate franchising: imagine specialised departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network,” she added.
The report noted that organised crime has shifted from trafficking physical goods to selling services that leave little trace and are far harder to seize or attribute to any single actor.
The report said combined annual losses from scam offences across East Asia, South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand were estimated at between $88.3 billion and $114.1 billion for 2025 alone, a sum that, even at the low end, outstrips the GDP of several countries in the region. The new figure exceeded the $18 to 37 billion estimates for 2023 and reflects the dramatic scaling of this criminal economy.
2025 saw a surge of trafficking in persons for forced criminality across the globe, with individuals from at least 80 countries and territories have been identified in scam compounds in the region, with recruitment networks documented as operating through multiple transit hubs in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
It also found that the criminals had widened their targets to Europe and North America, with advertisements targeting individuals with German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Norwegian and English language skills.
A UNODC lead analyst said the scale and complexity of this expanding organised crime economy are outpacing existing responses, which were not structured to address such sophisticated criminal activity.
The report noted that the methamphetamine market alone is now estimated at up to $74.8 billion at the retail level, approximately 20 per cent higher than the estimate presented in the 2019 assessment. The ketamine market is estimated at between $2.7 and 7.2 billion, while the renewed heroin economy is estimated to be worth between $24.1 and 27.7 billion.
Illegal online gambling generates estimated global illegal betting turnover of between $340 billion and $1.7 trillion annually, much of it serviced by criminal infrastructure based in South-East Asia.
The UNODC recommended that governments in the region update and harmonise legal frameworks to ensure that criminal justice responses keep pace with the evolving nature of transnational organised crime.
It urged the expansion of intelligence-led investigations to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to proactively identify, disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal networks.
The UN agency recommended strengthening financial investigations and targeting criminal finances, address enabling environments, improving governance, combating corruption and criminal safe havens, and developing technology-aware and anticipatory responses.
It urged governments to embed a human-centred approach in responses to organised crime and rescue victims, while deepening regional and international cooperation.
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Crime gangs snare more than $88 billion in scams in Asia-Pacific, UN says