Director General/Executive Director
Excellencies,
Distinguished participants,
It is an honour to be here to discuss how we can further strengthen international cooperation in fighting transnational organized crime.
This conference also addressed an important related threat in the first session, one that enables many other forms of crime and is expanding at an alarming rate, namely cybercrime.
As the recent ransomware attacks show, the ability to turn technology to criminal purposes, from any location, to exploit vulnerabilities in global systems has emerged as one of the most urgent crime prevention challenges we face today.
In fact, the session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice going on in Vienna as we speak is considering a draft resolution on international cooperation to combat cybercrime.
Transnational organized crime groups are profiting from asymmetric globalization, a new generation of information and communication technologies, new ways of doing business.
They are taking advantage of enforcement gaps, to develop new markets, expand operations and launder the criminal profits.
Moreover, the Security Council has repeatedly expressed concern about the intensifying nexus of transnational organized crime and terrorism in many parts of the world.
As you heard from my colleague Mr. Kovalenko from CTED in the earlier session, the internet is also being exploited for terrorist purposes, including to spread violent extremist ideologies and for fundraising.
These challenges are transnational and they are evolving. They threaten peace and security, impede sustainable development and the rule of law, and endanger economic and financial infrastructures.
They are testing the international community's capacities to confront such threats, and how we can best reinforce these capacities is a vital question facing all our countries today.
International cooperation against transnational organized crime is based on a solid framework that has been accepted by nearly every country in the world.
Here I am speaking of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocols on human trafficking, migrant smuggling and firearms, as well as the UN Convention against Corruption.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime acts as guardian of these international instruments. Our Office also supports countries to implement the three international drug control conventions and the universal legal instruments against terrorism, as well as the UN standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice.
This framework enables criminal justice cooperation, including mechanisms such as extradition, mutual legal assistance and confiscation of crime proceeds, as well as law enforcement cooperation, joint investigative teams and protection of witnesses.
It also provides a platform to build and expand partnerships with the private sector and civil society.
To help countries operationalize this framework, UNODC provides legislative support, capacity building and technical assistance, as well as top-flight research and analysis.
This includes our flagship World Drug Report, which will be released in a month's time.
Through UNODC's country, regional, inter-regional and global programmes, we are helping to develop capacities in intelligence-led policing, crime scene management, special investigative techniques, forensics, financial investigations and border management.
Working with our UN and other partners, the Office is reinforcing inter-agency, regional and inter-regional cooperation to promote information sharing and multilateral operations.
We are helping to connect financial intelligence units and asset recovery networks to target illicit financial flows, and strengthening direct contacts between law enforcement bodies, central authorities and prosecutors .
Alongside our work on the ground, UNODC is engaging with governments to identify joint responses to shared threats and further advance cross-border cooperation.
A prime example of this is our global programme on cybercrime.
UNODC is already engaged in building capacities to detect, investigate and disrupt cybercrime and last year we trained investigators, prosecutors and judges from over fifty countries.
But much more needs to be done. As we have seen, attacks can be launched by anyone, from anywhere, and we need to strengthen the capacities of all countries to confront cybercrime.
Cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used to move criminal proceeds.
The Bitcoin market now has a capitalization of around thirty billion dollars, and the number of people who bought drugs on the Internet - often using cryptocurrency - rose by nearly fifty per cent in 2015 over the previous year.
However, there remains no uniform legal definition of cryptocurrencies.
Many law enforcement agencies have limited knowledge of cryptocurrency operations, their links to transnational organized crime and how to conduct covert online investigations.
UNODC has developed courses on cryptocurrency investigation to address this gap and lay the groundwork for a robust transnational response.
Distinguished participants,
Organized criminals have exploited the gains of globalization to extend their reach online and in the real world.
But the international community also has the capacity to draw on the benefits of our interconnected societies and the many advances technology has given us.
We need to make better use of modern technologies to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible.
We need to build capacities, in all countries, and most of all, we need to commit the necessary resources to strengthen our own networks to confront these threats.
Thank you.