By Bardil 
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has issued a stark warning about the increasing reliance of organized crime syndicates on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to enhance their illicit operations.
In a detailed UNODC report, it was revealed that criminal organizations in Southeast Asia are crafting bespoke financial ecosystems. These include unlicensed exchanges and stablecoins, designed to circumvent regulatory oversight and launder substantial sums of illicit funds.
“…Many of the region’s largest criminal groups that have expanded within Southeast Asia and a growing number of jurisdictions in other parts of the world have rapidly diversified their business lines towards the development of key infrastructure.
This has extended far beyond the construction and management of physical scam centers to include online gambling platforms and software services, unlicensed payment processors and cryptocurrency exchanges, encrypted communications platforms and, most recently, stablecoins, four blockchain networks, and illicit online marketplaces, often controlled by the same criminal networks.”
The UNODC emphasizes the urgent need for international collaboration and the implementation of robust regulatory frameworks to effectively combat the burgeoning activities of these criminal networks.
“The subtle and ongoing spillover creeping into other regions has allowed Asian crime syndicates to broaden the scope of their operations and target an increasingly diverse range of victim profiles and nationalities from around the world.
More than this, it has allowed them to dramatically scale up profits and influence while simultaneously generating billions in illicit capital reserves (fiat and cryptocurrency) that can be reinvested into further expansion and also utilized to service the money laundering needs of other criminal groups globally.”
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Vladimir Sazonov/Ociaci
Source: UNODC Report – Inflection Point 2025