How organizations deal with crisis says a lot about their agility and resilience. By early 2022, the GI-TOC had largely emerged from one devastating global crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, only to find that the world was soon watching with horror as another unfolded in Ukraine. With that invasion, the organized crime landscape is shifting once again, and the situation looks bleak. The trajectories of organized crime are set to worsen.

The pandemic, however, had taught us that by remaining focused on our core strategy – to reduce the global harms caused by organized crime – there is opportunity to be found in crisis. Our programme of work to identify and address the links between the pandemic and illicit global economies and networks was valuable, productive and innovative; and with an agreement now in place to establish the Ukraine Observatory of Illicit Markets and Conflict, we are confident that this new project will be another bold step towards achieving our founding principle of catalyzing a global strategy against transnational organized crime.

This report sets out some of the organization’s major achievements in the 2022/23 reporting period.