Legalize it? – An International SWP Project Examines How Legal and Illegal Commodity Flows Intersect

Drugs, art, humans, gold – organized criminal networks smuggle
illegal products into legal supply chains to then sell them on the
European market. Roman Kern and Anne Kathrin Thüringer speak with
experts of an international SWP project that takes a closer look at
some of these illicit supply chains. Timestamp: 2:55 Mark Shaw,
Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized
Crime and renowned expert on international organized crime, talks
about the origin and evolution of illicit trade and financial flows
and the ways in which both are shaped today. Timestamp: 6:26 Daniel
Brombacher, head of the project »Global Partnership on Drug
Policies and Development« at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) analyzes the visible and
invisible stages of the global drug trade. Timestamp: 11:51 Jan
Schubert is currently seconded to the Federal Foreign Office as
Desk Officer in the field of international cooperation against Drug
Trafficking, Organized Crime, Human Trafficking, Piracy and
Corruption and as liaison officer to the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He describes how the civil wars and
instability in Iraq and Syria have created attractive spaces for
organized criminal networks to engage in the illicit trade of art
works. Timestamp: 17:59 Dr Judith Vorrath is a Senior Associate at
the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)
with a focus on transnational organized crime linked to armed
violence and fragility. As she investigates illegal human
trafficking, particularly of women from southern Nigeria, she sheds
light on the connection to local traditions and spiritual rituals,
as well as the colonial slave trade and even current migration
movements. Timestamp: 25:14 Dr Melanie Müller is a Senior Associate
with a focus on Southern Africa at the German Institute for
International and Security Affairs (SWP) and the head of the
research project “Approaches for Transnational Governance of
Sustainable Commodity Supply Chains”. Her research examines illegal
gold mining in South Africa and the resulting transnational illicit
trade and financial flows. Publications Mark Shaw Mark Shaw, Give
us more guns. How South Africa's Gangs were Armed,
Johannesburg/Cape Town/London: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021,
https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/give-us-more-guns-how-south-africa-s-gangs-were-armed
Tuesday Reitano and Mark Shaw, Criminal Contagion: How Mafias
Gangsters and Scammers Profit from a Pandemic, C Hurst & Co
Publishers Ltd., 2021,
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/criminal-contagion/ Daniel
Brombacher: Daniel Brombacher and Sarah David, From Alternative
Development to Development-Oriented Drug Policies, Graduate
Institute Geneva, 12, 2020,
https://journals.openedition.org/poldev/3711 Daniel Brombacher, Jan
Westerbarkei, From Alternative Development to Sustainable
Development: The Role of Development Within the Global Drug Control
Regime, Policy Commentary, Journal of Illicit Economies and
Development 1(1), 2018: 89–98,
https://jied.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/jied.12/ Melanie Müller:
Melanie Müller, Armin Paasch, When only the coal counts: German
co-responsibility for human rights in the South African coal
sector, Johannesburg: ActionAid South Africa, 2016 Judith Vorrath:
Judith Vorrath, Verena Zoppei, Africa–EU relations on organized
crime: between securitization and fragmentation, In: Ariadna Ripoll
Servent/Florian Trauner (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Justice
and Home Affairs Research, Abingdon & New York: Routledge,
2018, pp. 323-335 Judith Vorrath, Organized Crime and Development,
Challenges and Policy Options in West Africa’s Fragile States, SWP
Research Paper, 2015,
https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/organized-crime-and-development
This podcast was created as part of a workshop funded by the German
Foreign Office.