Deep Dive: Exploring Organized Crime
Twice winner of the 'Best Deep Dive Podcast' at the Publishers Podcast Awards, shortlisted four times for 'Best Investigative Podcast' and once for 'Best Video Podcast'. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime brings you stories and investigations from the global criminal underworld. The topics covered by Deep Dive are far ranging, one episode could be looking at a hybrid paramilitary organized criminal cartel; the next could be the dismantling of an encrypted communications network; or the use of complex corporate structures to hide illicit activity; or the role organized crime has in the recycling industry. This podcast series demonstrates...
Episodes
Dethroning BigBoss: The Fall of Archetyp
Inspired by the ethos of Silk Road and the lifespans of Agora and Dream Market, a new player emerged from the shadows of Tor in 2020: Archetyp. Built on promises of security, usability, and “ethical” standards, the marketplace steadily grew…
Living Together: The Gangs of Haiti - Part 3: "Wake Up! The Bandits Are Coming!"
Part 3 - "Wake Up! The Bandits Are Coming!"At the end of March this year, officers from the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) responded to a request for assistance when an armoured Haitian National Police vehicle becam…
Living Together: The Gangs of Haiti - Part 2: Fighting Back
Part 2 - 'Fighting Back'In 2022, a video emerged of an alleged senior gang member, Zo Pwason, who had been caught by an armed group of Haitian citizens, led by Commissioner Jean-Ernest Muscadin. Zo Pwason was allegedly a senior member of th…
Living Together: The Gangs of Haiti - Part 1: The Death of a President
Part 1 - "The Death of a President"In July 2021, the President of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated as he slept at home by a band of mercenaries. His murder sparked a wave of violent protests and a period of unprecedented crisis in the…
Drugs, Dead Drops and the Battle Over Russian Darknet Markets
If you were to walk around a Russian city, you might not realise it but hundreds of small packages of drugs, could be just below the surface, buried in the ground, or maybe attached to the back of a nearby drainpipe with magnets, or hidden …
Colombia & Total Peace: Part 2: Buenaventura – “The Pact for Life”
Buenaventura – “The Pact for Life”Buenaventura has long been an important node in international illicit markets, particularly cocaine trafficking due to its port. Gangs, paramilitaries and organized criminal networks have all looked to gain…
Colombia & Total Peace: Part 1 - "The ELN - The Easy Win"
Colombia is a country that has been racked by conflict for around 60 years - multiple armed groups and organized crime have waged war against each other and the state.In 2016, after nearly seven years of negotiations, the FARC demobilized, …
Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia - Louis Ferrante - Underworlds with Mark Shaw
The History of the American Mafia: How the Mob Built Its Empire in the US, with Former Gambino Crime Family Associate, Louis Ferrante.In this episode, Mark sits down with former Mob associate Louis Ferrante to discuss his book, Borgata: The…
TRAILER: Underworlds with Mark Shaw - Underworlds with Mark Shaw
Welcome to Underworlds with Mark Shaw.Organized Crime is everywhere, hidden in plain sight. The stories from this world have been mythologised by Hollywood. But the reality can be even stranger and more exciting than fiction. From the golde…
Mohamed Amra and the gangs of Marseille
In May 2024, a prison van was attacked at a highway toll in Normandy, France. In dramatic footage shared on social media, a black SUV, driving the wrong direction, rammed into the prison van just as it went through the barriers. Then gunmen…
The Long Tail: Cross-Channel Migrant Smuggling (France to the UK)
On the 1st May 2024, 711 migrants successfully crossed the Channel between France and the UK in small boats. This year is so far on track to see the highest number of crossings on record.This highly industrialised illicit industry estimated…
LockBit: Is this the end?
LockBit, the world's largest ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) provider suffered a very public takedown by an international law enforcement task force, Operation Cronos.The ransomware behemoth quickly relaunched just days later. But in a world…
Russia, War & Organized Crime
Russian organized crime has a mythology attached to it - the brutal tattooed men of the Vory v Zakone. But those days are long in the past, rapid globalisation saw a new type of organized criminal take the reins in the Russian underworld, s…
Monitoring: What is going on in Ecuador?
At the start of the year masked gunman burst into a television studio in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The cameras were live and the entire event was broadcast. The video shows gang members shouting at staff, pushing them to the ground, threatening t…
Monitoring: Ovidio Guzmán and the Kingpin Strategy
'The King is dead, long live the King!'In September 2023, Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, stood in a courtroom as a series of charges were laid out, including his alleged role as a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.The…
Illicit Financial Flows in the Western Balkans
“If you can do it without consequences, then you should do it”.What are illicit Financial Flows, or IFFs? And why do they matter? Every illicit market, from drug trafficking, people smuggling, the illegal wildlife trade, arms trafficking et…
Monitoring: A Month of Drug Seizures
In September 2023, there were four large cocaine seizures in and around the Atlantic Ocean - off the coast of Ireland, West Africa, Brazil, and Cape Verde. The flows of cocaine that traverse the Atlantic travel mainly by sea, from the huge …
“They don’t ******* withdraw it” - Scam Call Centres in Ukraine
Scam call centres are a blight on the lives of anyone unfortunate enough to have any dealings with them. They come to you with promises of a short cut to wealth, to fix a non-existent issue with your computer, claiming to be from a charity,…
Colombia: In the face of crime and violence
For over half a century armed groups in Colombia have battled one another and the state across the country. The FARC, ELN, AUC, AGC, and the infamous drug cartels, have committed untold atrocities on everyday Colombians. These groups use vi…
The Rise and Fall of the Conti Ransomware Group
For around two years the Conti ransomware group rampaged across the internet. They attacked hospitals, educational institutions, businesses, governments, and many more, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in ransomware payments. Busin…
“Death Can Wait”: Drugs on the Frontline in Ukraine
Throughout history soldiers have used drugs, sometimes to fight better or to stay alert, or perhaps to help cope with the extreme psychological situation and trauma they are faced with. The current conflict in Ukraine is no different. Conce…
P2 - The Murder of Ahmed Divela
Part 2: "The truth will triumph".The description of Ahmed's murder showed that the killers were professionals, trained in the use of firearms. But despite the crowds that witnessed the killing, no one has ever been prosecuted for the crime.…
P1 - The Murder of Ahmed Divela
Part 1: "Ahmed was no coward".On World Press Freedom Day (3rd May) 2018, the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, took to the stage in Accra to deliver a speech on press freedom. Ghana, had long been a beacon for press freedom and was selec…
P2 - The Wagner Group in Sudan
Part 2: “It’s the worst kept secret in Sudan”.In 2019, the Dossier Centre in London, shared some leaked internal documents from the private military company, the Wagner Group. The documents showed that Wagner had identified several countrie…
P1 - The Wagner Group in Sudan
Part 1: “Who are these guys and what are they doing here?”In late February 2022, Airport workers in Khartoum International Airport in Sudan are stood glued to television screens, watching Russian tanks entering the outskirts of Kyiv in Ukra…
The Drug Markets of East and Southern Africa
Africa is often the forgotten continent for things like drug trafficking, but just look around the news, the African continent plays a critical role in the global illicit drug market – and its growing – And no more so than in East and South…
How to Respond to Environmental Crime
What does the term 'Environmental Crime' mean to you? Probably something like elephant or rhino poaching. Perhaps the plight of the pangolin, the adorable little armoured mammal, often sighted as the "most trafficked animal in the world". B…
P4 - 'Ndrangheta - "The Cocaine Gateway"
P4 - 'Ndrangheta - "The Cocaine Gateway"The port of Gioia Tauro in Calabria has long been considered one of the main cocaine gateways into Europe. In this episode we're going to tell the story of the 'ndrangheta and this port. How its compl…
P3 - 'Ndrangheta - Canada: "The Chamber of Control"
Part 3 - "The Chamber of Control"Woodbridge, Vaughan, Greater Toronto Area, 2014. A man called Carmine Verduci was gunned down outside a sports café. Over the coming days Italian and Canadian law enforcement alleged that Verduci, born in Ca…
P2 - 'Ndrangheta - "'Ndrangheta Royalty Down Under"
Part 2 - "ndrangheta Royalty Down Under"In 2007, the Australian Federal Police received a tipoff about a container arriving at the Port of Melbourne. The container had come from Italy and was full of tins of tomatoes, inside those tins was …
P1 - 'Ndrangheta - "The Madonna of the Mountain"
Part 1 - "The Madonna of the Mountain"In Calabria, southern Italy there is a mountain massif called Aspromonte, "harsh mountain". The villages that hug the mountain slopes, places like San Luca, Natile and Platì are the birthplaces of the c…
P2 - Killing the Power of the Pen: Violence against journalists in Mexico
Part 2 - "I fear for my life"In 2019, journalist Lourdes Maldonado rose from her seat to speak to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a press conference - it was during this moment she said "I fear for my life" due to a long running le…
P1 - Killing the Power of the Pen: Violence against journalists in Mexico
Part 1 - "It’s a message of terror, to stop asking questions"Mexico is known as one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist on the planet, and 2022 is on record to be the deadliest yet. José Luis Gamboa Arenas, a journalist from Ver…
"You beat me" - Part 3: Clan del Golfo: The Fall of Otoniel
As the net begins to close on Otoniel, life on the run is hard. Deep in the jungles of Úraba, he never stays in a single place for more than two nights, he no longer communicates using phones and he stays away from urban centres for fear of…
"Don't text or call me" - Part 2: Clan del Golfo: The Fall of Otoniel
At the end of part 1, Otoniel we left him in sole charge of Clan del Golfo, the biggest organized crime group in Colombia.In part 2 "Don't text or call me", we look through the eyes of a man who goes by the alias "Messi", who was involved i…
"He's an animal" - Part 1: Clan del Golfo: The Fall of Otoniel
In late 2021, the leader of Clan del Golfo (The Urabeños) Dairo Antonio Úsuga, aka "Otoniel", was captured by the Colombian police. President Iván Duque said that the arrest was only matched by the fall of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s.Over th…
Killing in Silence: The Global Assassination Monitor
An assassination is like a stone being dropped into the middle of a still pond – the splash is the violent act itself – the ripples are the repercussions, that spread far and wide – fear, intimidation, silencing, corruption, erosion of trus…
Plastics for Profit
In this episode we look at the criminal involvement in the plastic waste industry.The lucrative global market in plastic waste is expected to be reach over $50 billion US Dollars by 2022. From Mafia groups to poly-crime networks, the tempta…
Crossing the Line: India and Myanmar
In this episode we tell the story of a region, the "Seven Sisters", otherwise known as the Indian Northeast and one town in particular, Moreh, and the relationship with neighbouring Myanmar.Moreh sits just on the Indian side of the border a…
Fishy Business
This is a story of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, complex corporate structures, human trafficking, arms smuggling, corruption and the capture of state institutions.In this collaborative episode with Africa and the Global…