| | | | | Discover the latest thinking, research and events shaping our work. Subscribe to our newsletter for a round-up of news and insights. |
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Following the Money in the Grey Zone
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Olivia Allison (RUSI CFS/SECTA) joined Kinga Redlowska (RUSI CFS) and Justyna Gudzowska (The Sentry) on Episode 2 of RUSI’s Suspicious Transaction Report podcast, “Financing War in the Grey Zone”. They explore how armed groups raise, move and spend money, from gold and natural resources to regional financial centres. They also look at how small payments, criminal networks and social media monetisation can fuel sabotage, recruitment and hostile state activity.
The conversation closes with what the FATF, governments, financial intelligence units and banks should do differently, from conflict-financing typologies to more agile, network-based sanctions and risk detection. Listen now. |
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| | The Kinahan Extradition on Morning Ireland |
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Cathy Haenlein (RUSI) appeared on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland to discuss the extradition of Daniel Kinahan from the UAE to Ireland on charges of directing a criminal organisation. In the interview, Cathy explored questions raised by her SOC ACE project on the impact of sanctions. These included the role sanctions can play within broader strategies for tackling transnational organised crime. Listen to the clip and find out more about the SOC ACE project. |
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Crime for Hire: When States Outsource Covert Tasks
Professor Heather Marquette (University of Birmingham) and Matthew Redhead (RUSI) presented to the National Crime Agency’s HUMINT Academic Hub on how and why states outsource covert tasks to criminal actors, and what that means for the response. The session drew on their new RUSI Journal article, Illicit Outsourcing: Domain, Politics and the Limits of Operational Responses in State–Crime Relationships. The article maps how states use criminals as covert operatives, service providers, weapons and sources of funding, from Russian sabotage to Iran’s transnational repression, and shows that these relationships vary more by domain than by the state involved. Drawing on lessons from stabilisation, it argues that arrests and sanctions alone rarely work, and calls for politically informed, joined-up responses, including dedicated cross-government units. Read more about the project: |
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SOC ACE Evidence to Parliament’s Russia Inquiry
Matthew Redhead and Professor Heather Marquette have submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament’s Russia inquiry. It draws on SOC ACE’s state threats research, including Old Wine, New Bottles? The Hidden Front and Illicit Outsourcing (with Professor Heather Marquette), as well as ongoing work on Western policy responses to state threats. Read the submission. |
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| Dr Xu Peng gives evidence to Parliament on China-linked illicit capital
SOC ACE researcher Dr Xu Peng (University of Manchester and SOAS) has submitted evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into UK–China economic engagement, drawing on her project The Centrality of the Margins. She argues that UK shell companies and professional services launder proceeds of Chinese and Southeast Asian fraud, noting three formation agents closed in January 2026 after registering over 11,000 companies without anti-money-laundering checks. She recommends treating business services as an economic-security issue and developing a UK position on cross-border victim compensation. The submission (CHI0053) is available on the UK Parliament website. |
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Rare Earths and Scam Logistics: New Research from the Myanmar–China Borderlands
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Two new outputs from our project, The Centrality of the Margins: Borderlands, Illicit Economies and Uneven Development.  Contested Rare Earth Frontiers in the Myanmar–China Borderlands: Extraction, Conflict and Uneven Development (Research Paper 48), by Dr Patrick Meehan (University of Manchester), Dan Seng Lawn (KRC), Dr Xu Peng (Manchester/SOAS CIVAD) and Professor Jonathan Goodhand (SOAS/University of London), traces the rare earth corridor linking Kachin State with China’s Yunnan Province. Kachin State is now one of the world’s most significant sources of heavy rare earths, and the paper shows how the green transition depends on frontiers where conflict, environmental damage and poverty are concentrated. It also analyses what changed when the Kachin Independence Army took control of the major mining areas in late 2024.
Why Raids Are Not Enough: The Logistics Behind Online Scam Compounds by Dr Xu Peng looks at how online scam compounds in Myanmar’s conflict-affected borderlands are built and kept running. It follows the brokers, enclaves, platforms and payment channels that move people, money and supplies, and explains why security-led crackdowns often push harms elsewhere rather than dismantling the industry. |
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The ‘Dark Side of Globalisation’? Anti‑Illicit Trade Discourse and the Role of Ideas in the Fight Against Globalised Economic Criminality  Fighting ‘illicit trade’ sounds straightforward, but new SOC ACE research suggests the way we talk about it may be part of the problem. Drawing on 52 interviews with international organisations, government agencies, private firms and NGOs, Dr Adam Blanden (University of Birmingham), Dr Mayya Konovalova (Birmingham Business School) and Prof Sami Bensassi (Birmingham Business School) trace how the category of ‘illicit trade’ was shaped largely in the Global North, through tobacco smuggling, counterfeit goods and trade-based money laundering. They find that the resulting discourse targets smugglers and stigmatises particular traders while the systemic drivers of economic crime go unchecked and may even weaken the political will needed to tackle illicit finance at its roots. Read the research.
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Militias, Patrons and the Pull of Organised Crime
Tom Rodwell (Independent) has launched a new SOC ACE project examining why militias sponsored by external stabilisation actors turn to organised crime. It explores whether militias pursue financial independence to protect themselves against losing their patrons’ support, and how policymakers can anticipate these dynamics and limit the harms. Find out more.
When History Becomes a Weapon
Matthew Redhead’s new project, Manufacturing Memory: Historical Revelation as State Threat, examines how states selectively release, strip of context, redact or even forge historical material to justify action, undermine opponents and weaken target societies. It also asks how far generative AI and deepfakes are being used for this purpose. Find out more.
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#OC24: Naming the Threat, Missing the Evidence
4-5 November 2026 Zoom Webinar Register or find out more here.
The 24-hour Global Organized Crime Conference returns on 4–5 November, with 27 back-to-back sessions in a single Zoom webinar, starting at 10:00 CET on 4 November. Don’t miss Panel 22 at 05:30 CET on 5 November, “Naming the Threat, Missing the Evidence: How Illicit Trade Discourse Is Built, Contested, and Tested”. It features Dr Mayya Konovalova, Dr Adam Nix (University of Birmingham) and Dr Yangjun Han (University of Birmingham), moderated by Dr Sami Bensassi (University of Birmingham).
The panel draws on their SOC ACE project on global trade hubs along China’s maritime Silk Road, which uses mirror trade statistics to test assumptions about smuggling and illicit financial flows, and to examine how certain hubs, such as the Seychelles, come to be stigmatised. View the agenda.
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SOC ACE at IACC 2026
1 to 4 December 2026 Punta Cana, Dominican Republic |
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| Professor Heather Marquette will speak on two panels at the International Anti-Corruption Conference in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. View the programme. IACC 2026 agenda. Chaired by Francesca Recanatini (World Bank Group), the panel, Igniting Integrity Against Criminal Capture: Data to Disrupt Corrupt Networks, looks at how data can expose and disrupt alliances between corruption and organised crime. Fellow panellists include Michele Riccardi (Transcrime), Maria De la Luz (Federal Prosecutor, Mexico), Ian Tennant (GI-TOC) and Romain Le Cour Grandmaison (Haiti and Caribbean Observatory, GI-TOC). Foreign Influence or Global Kleptocracy? Reassessing the Problem, Rebuilding the Toolkit asks whether the line between “foreign influence” and domestic kleptocracy has collapsed, as illicit wealth increasingly connects kleptocrats, strategic investment, disinformation, sanctions evasion and professional enablers. Panellists include Olivia Allison, Dr Tena Prelec (University of Rijeka), Francesca Recanatini and Dr Sami Bensassi. |
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| | | | Countering the Illicit Financing of Hybrid Threats
Olivia Allison and Oksana Ihnatenko (RUSI) have published “Combatting the Illicit Financing of Hybrid Threats” in the RUSI Journal. Drawing on Russia’s war in Ukraine and its destabilisation of Europe, they show how hybrid warfare is funded through illicit networks and argue that the FATF and states need new typologies, metrics and controls to disrupt it. Read the research
Crime as Statecraft
Dr Jessica Davis’s (CSIS) research features in The Soufan Center’s IntelBrief, examining how states increasingly use organised crime networks for assassinations, sabotage and covert influence, a distinct adaptation to the post-9/11 counterterrorism environment. Read the IntelBrief.
Responding to Hybrid Threats with Democratic Integrity
Dr Liam O’Shea (RUSI) has written a new crisis management handbook with the Folke Bernadotte Academy. It turns research on crisis management, hybrid threats and democratic governance into practical guidance for preparing for and running a crisis response. Because hybrid attacks are designed to provoke unnecessary or disproportionate reactions, the handbook treats democratic principles as a source of resilience rather than a constraint. It also offers seven practical tests to apply at the point of decision, such as whether an action is legal, necessary and proportionate. Read the handbook.
Webinar: Hiding in Plain Sight – Russia’s Offshore Networks in Europe
Join this GI ACE seminar on 5 November at 1pm GMT, led by Vanya Petrova and Marius Köppen of the Center for the Study of Democracy. Their new research, Strategic Corruption: The Nexus Between Russian Illicit Financial Flows and Offshore Finance, finds that the corporate networks of Russia’s 100 largest companies grew by a third between 2015 and 2025, to almost 11,000 entities. Ownership routed through Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the UK and the British Virgin Islands nearly doubled. The session will discuss why sanctions enforcement is falling short and what the UK, EU and US can do to close the gaps. Register here. |
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| | | | If you’ve used any of SOC ACE’s research to inform policy and/or practice, let us know by sending us an email at:
socace@contacts.bham.ac.uk |
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