corruption

Criminal cartels and Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) rely on corruption to enable their pursuit of criminal profit and power. Indeed, Mexico’s cartels emerged from the seeds of corrupt police profiting from the narcotics trade. While violence is the public face of criminal cartels and transnational gangs, corruption is the core threat to public trust and state legitimacy and capacity.

Killing terrorists is not all about kinetic strikes, area clearances, and pinpoint raids. Terrorist organizations must be pressured in every aspect of their organization’s lifeblood. Attacking their coffers, often referred to as “counter-threat financing,” or CTF, is a key aspect of hurting terrorists from growing future capabilities and preventing future high-profile attacks.

Combating Corruption: Improving Department of Defense Support in Attacking the Corruption, Transnational Organized Crime, and Transregional Terror Organization Nexus

An economic approach to understanding the nature of rural corruption in Afghanistan suggests that ISAF anti-corruption measures should focus directly, not indirectly, on this issue.

Will Mexico’s admittance into the Trans-Pacific Partnership create an even more empowered global criminal network?