From the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, January 30:
Transnational illicit activities, ranging from romance scams to human trafficking, generated over US$3 trillion in 2023, resulting in the destruction of victims' sense of security and, in some cases, their lives, according to a 2024 Global Financial Crime Report by Nasdaq.
“The world’s multi-trillion-dollar financial crime epidemic is more than a money problem,” said Nasdaq Chair and CEO Adena Friedman. “It has profound human costs from despicable crimes that have a deep and lasting impact on the communities we serve.”
Feeding the pool of trillions in illicit cash flows are veins of other crimes that need their proceeds laundered before use. This includes an estimated $782.9 billion generated by transnational drug trafficking, $346.7 billion from human trafficking, and $485.6 billion across multiple types of fraud, the multinational finance corporation said.
As stated in the report, the total cost of financial crime is difficult to accurately quantify, given how many instances go unreported due to victims feeling a sense of shame or helplessness at their predicament. The $3.1 trillion figure is merely an educated sum of recorded cases, indicating that the true total is significantly higher....
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