Globalization, state–crime collaboration and tense geopolitical conditions have given rise to a troubling new phenomenon. More needs to be done to better understand this emerging threat and its implications.

Just before noon on a late-summer’s day in 2019, former Chechen rebel Zelimkhan Khangoshvili is shot three times in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park, and dies from his wounds. The gunman, a Russian citizen, is later identified as a convicted gangland killer with links to the Russian Federal Security Service. 

In Beijing in March 2021, a middle-aged man poses for a photograph accepting an award for his ‘patriotic’ business abroad from a group with links to the People’s Liberation Army, the military wing of the Chinese Communist Party. The man in question is Wan Kuok-koi, widely reported to be one of Asia’s most notorious criminals.  

More recently, in May 2024, Sweden’s security service reported that the Iranian government was using criminal networks in Sweden ‘to carry out violent acts against other states, groups and individuals’. In February 2025, a cyber attack on Italian websites by pro-Russian hackers similarly illustrated the growing challenge of determining where the state apparatus ends and criminal networks begin.  

These seemingly disparate events point to a change in the age-old relationship between states and criminal actors, with governments now using organized crime as a tool of foreign policy in novel ways.  

Beyond conventional state–crime collaboration 

The relationship between governments and criminals is not new, with historical examples ranging from the Sea Dogs who raided England’s enemies with Queen Elizabeth I’s approval, to US cooperation with the mafia during World War II. But the connection between these two realms is rapidly evolving. Globalization has connected the world through advances in travel and communications, the internationalization of markets and the erosion of boundaries to the flow of capital. But while these changes have led to greater international integration in government and business, they have also had an impact below the waterline, causing the tectonic plates of the state–crime landscape to shift.  

States have long used criminal networks as an element of clandestine diplomacy – forming limited alliances for specific purposes. But the murky intersection of state and crime in overseas operations has become a broader and more entrenched phenomenon.  

Recently, a deeper form of state instrumentalization of crime has emerged. Various state actors are directing criminal proxies abroad to carry out assassinations, disinformation campaigns, cyber attacks and sabotage, to gather intelligence and move money, gold or sanctioned goods. Such state-led instrumentalization of organized crime and criminal actors abroad to achieve foreign and domestic policy priorities can be referred to as ‘geocriminality’.  

Conditions enabling geocriminality 

GI-TOC research has highlighted examples where the state–crime nexus in Asia has evolved into forms of geocriminality. Further analysis has revealed that the deeper entanglement between states and criminal networks is evident in geographically distinct cases such as Russia, Iran and North Korea. These symmetries suggested a wider global phenomenon.  

In identifying where state-crime collaboration had taken this more extreme form, it has become clear that geocriminality is more likely to occur when a state is strong at home but isolated abroad. In authoritarian states, those in power are typically subject only to limited forms of scrutiny and accountability, and state actors are better able to utilize criminal networks without facing widespread criticism, loss of legitimacy or legal consequences.  

However, in the international community such states often face substantial constraints on their international activities (including but not limited to sanctions) and therefore use organized criminal groups to achieve their objectives abroad. When greater scope to use criminals for state purposes meets increased constraints on the state’s international activities, the calculus tilts towards geocriminality.  

A case in point is Russia, where increased sanctions following the annexation of Crimea accelerated the state’s instrumentalization of criminal networks. Russia’s domestic political landscape inhibits substantial public scrutiny around the state’s use of crime. At the same time, increasing restrictions on state activity abroad make state instrumentalization of criminal networks more attractive. 

But while contemporary geopolitical priorities tend to focus on Russia and a handful of other countries, conditions in which geocriminality can occur are clearly not limited to these examples. And although the kind of state–crime relationship that geocriminality signifies is clearly better suited to authoritarian conditions, questions remain about its viability in other contexts. 

Recent allegations exchanged during diplomatic tensions between two established democracies, for example, have raised fundamental questions about the necessary conditions for geocriminality: can established democracies develop crime-linked operations to the scale that they would constitute geocriminality, despite media scrutiny and political opposition? Does evidence of geocriminality suggest a failure of democratic institutions? Are we witnessing new forms of state–criminal collaboration? What are the enablers of geocriminal behaviour, and how might we respond?  

Understanding then responding 

There is a strong case to be made that a more developed form of state–crime cooperation has emerged, but several questions remain – necessitating debate and refinement of the concept of geocriminality. Understanding the development of state–crime relationships is essential if states, organizations and individuals are to better mitigate the associated threats.  

While much work remains to be done to better understand geocriminality’s implications, it is clear that any meaningful analysis of international relations and national security will increasingly need to take account of this configuration of criminal activity and the opaque networks that sustain it.   

The Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, co-published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and the London School of Economics Press, will soon release a call for papers to a special issue on the concept of geocriminality.