Following the money has long been a core pillar of the fight against organized crime, including as part of the UN’s key legal instrument to counter organized crime, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC). But whether it has been effectively deployed to disrupt criminal ecosystems is open to debate. Indeed, the adequacy of the existing approaches to addressing illicit financial flows is consistently questioned. Looking forward, what is clear is that many criminal groups are adapting faster than the measures designed to disrupt them. Recent discussions in New York and outputs from relevant UN processes have highlighted that the future of ‘follow the money’ lies in tracing the payments and services that enable the wider criminal ecosystem to function. 

This was a major topic of discussion in New York in July, during the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Issues raised ranged from online scam centres to gang economies in Haiti, and a common theme emerged: organized criminal operations depend on financial and logistical support that often extends well beyond those directly carrying out the offences. 

During the event, some participants highlighted the perceived progress. Representatives from INTERPOL, for instance, described new tools for interrupting payments and identifying criminal assets, and various member states outlined recent legal reforms that support asset investigations and seizure, as well as enhanced international cooperation. Banks and other financial institutions noted that unusual payroll payments, linked accounts, shared IP addresses and phone numbers can reveal connections between seemingly separate criminal groups.  

These developments highlight the need to look beyond the proceeds of crime to consider how contemporary criminal markets operate as ecosystems. Scam centres, for instance, may function as individual offices or compounds, but they are also often nodes in much larger networks that share recruitment systems, victim data, technology, money laundering services and political protection. Technology and crime-as-a-service models enable these operations to target victims across borders and languages at a relatively low cost. As a marker of the harm this causes, the UN’s human rights office estimated that 300 000 people from 66 countries have been trafficked into scam compounds in South East Asia alone. 

The lack of integrated and effective approaches to financial investigations is not new, whether due to the insufficient attention given to the informal economy, the absence of political will and resources, or vulnerabilities in jurisdictions with high corruption and weak rule of law. But despite these fundamental challenges, there is a level of appetite to improve the response. What has been clear from recent discussions in international forums is that taking a broader approach to following the money through an organized criminal ecosystem means working backwards through the criminal enterprise to identify those who paid the recruiters, supplied the technology, transported the workers, received rent or protection payments, and converted or laundered the proceeds. As banks, technology companies and law enforcement agencies often only hold fragments of this information, it is crucial to share intelligence across sectors and jurisdictions.  

While impact under current international instruments is difficult to find, there are some signs of recognition of the issue in the recently published recommendations of the UNTOC Working Group on Trafficking in Persons and the first UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice resolution addressing trafficking for forced criminality. Recognizing forced criminality as a trafficking issue can prevent investigations from stopping at the coerced workers.  

International discussions regularly lament the blurred line between victim and offender – increasingly emerging in scam operations involving trafficking and coercion – which also has a financial dimension. Low-level workers who handle accounts or payments are still frequently prosecuted for fraud they were forced to commit, despite states signing up to the international obligations that should prevent this. As is consistently called for by international organizations and civil society alike, applying the non-punishment principle and improving victim identification would shift the focus of investigations towards managers, recruiters and financial decision-makers.  

An ecosystem approach is also important because scam centres are known to adapt or develop when enforcement increases. Closing one compound may simply result in the operation being relocated elsewhere. Financial intelligence should therefore monitor changes in recruitment routes, company registrations, property use and demand for digital or financial services in new or emerging locations. This can help to identify displacement earlier, including cases where management, workers, infrastructure and proceeds are spread across different jurisdictions. 

As recent UN meetings have made clear, there is a growing awareness of the need to follow the money across an organized criminal ecosystem. However, this approach requires a shift in focus, and a recognition of where following the money has fallen short in the past. It means connecting financial data with information on recruitment networks, corporate records and digital infrastructure. Governments, financial institutions, technology companies, international organizations and civil society all have access to different parts of this system. Bringing these insights together will be critical to strengthening international cooperation against increasingly complex and sophisticated criminal networks, if the ambitions expressed at the UN are to become a reality.