EOC: Week 6 Illicit Trade

(http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2011/04/chin-proposes-counterfeit-crackdown-shoppers-vent.html)

Money laundering, Smuggling, transporting and illicit trade has taken over the underground illegal trade groups causing massive corruption across the globe. From knock off designer purses, watches and shoes, illicit trading has now taken it a step further making pharmaceuticals that contain toxic and deadly ingredients and human organs that have been stolen from bodies or sold at a very low cost. “The world is under threat from a new kind of international crime wave: illicit trade in everything from knock-off Prada bags to bogus medicines, from dangerous weapons to humans themselves. While smuggling is nothing new, globalization has made it larger and far more ominous. The global value of this "dark trade" is estimated to reach a phenomenal ten percent of the world's trade. Since the 1990s it has been growing seven times faster than legal trade—and it's having profound consequences for the world's economy and for politics everywhere” (http://www.pbs.org/programs/illicit/). Illicit trade has been expanding across the globe from china to Boliva to the US. Having organized crimenetwroks to smuggling everything and anything they can get their hands on. To clean their illegal fortune these underground groups lauder their money through investments such as property. “A new National Geographic Special, Illicit: The Dark Trade, is not just about smuggling or crime, it's about how these criminal networks are changing the world. Illicit trade has increasingly dangerous political consequences: money laundering, massive corruption and the subversion of entire governments. It is changing how we live in ways unrealized, and governments around the world seem powerless to stop it. Illicit trade is redefining economic relationships, borders and the role of workers, managers, armies and governments” (http://www.pbs.org/programs/illicit/).