The involvement of authoritarian states and their proxies (and enablers) in expanding illicit economies around the globe – including across the digital world – generates not only greater expansion of criminality and corruption, but also market chaos, insecurity, and instability. Through malign influence and active measures, such authoritarian states are hostile to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, and also leverage their corruptive influence to increase illicit wealth for their ruling elites and impel their global revanchist geopolitical operations towards greater power in a multi-polar world.
The result of economic incentives (bribes) and subsequent coercive pressures aimed at vulnerable nations is that subordinate dependent vassals are being held ransom by authoritarian finance that exploit governance and regulatory gaps, resulting in the co-option of national sovereignty, the pillaging of critical minerals and national resources, targeted political interference, criminalized markets, and full penetration by diasporic criminal proxies. They too are reinvesting and laundering their dirty money in hubs of illicit trade, the digital world, “angel” capital ventures, illegal gold trade, and through newer forms of money laundering including via cryptocurrency and “value”.
The session will also explore pragmatic solutions and partnerships to counter ecosystems of criminality including across the digital world being exploited by authoritarian regimes, illicit threat networks, criminal entrepreneurs, and their proxy enablers. Our panelists will also provide insights on effective practices and whole-of-society frameworks for deterring and disrupting threat finance, cross-border criminality, and malign activities by such bad actors and threat networks in weaking democracy, the international rules-based order, and the infiltration and penetration of governance structures, markets, and critical industries including in the Americas, Eurasia, and other regions. There will also be a special focus on the convergence of opacity including related to global trade shipping (flags of convenience), anonymous shell companies, beneficial ownership, and how organized criminals co-opt the state and the military to expand their illicit empires.
For example, in Africa, Russia’s Wagner Group continues to corrupt state officials, allowing them to have greater access to gold and critical minerals, as criminals and militias work with other illicit threat networks to hollow out state institutions, co-opt state security forces and, in effect, turn a state into a criminal enterprise. Other authoritarian proxies and enablers in other parts of the world are threatening democracy, the rule of law, and market security.