VIENNA — The UN's office on drugs and crime unveiled on Tuesday a new tool in the fight against organized crime, the result of a joint effort with the Italian and Colombian governments and global policing body Interpol.
UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov and Italian Interior Minister Annamaria Cancelleri introduced the tool, a digest of more than 200 case analyses and knowledge from more than 50 experts that countries can use to understand different crime-fighting experiences and integrate them into their own strategies.
Fedotov said the digest was much needed, given the multi-faceted nature of organised crime.
"Organised crime groups engage in many different criminal activities and markets. Drug trafficking is one prominent example; others include trafficking in persons and cultural property, extortion, cybercrime and piracy," Fedotov said during the presentation.
"To effectively combat organised crime, countries must dismantle the criminal organization as a whole, bring the ringleaders to justice, deprive them of their illegal profits and prevent them from laundering money," he added.
The tool's presentation took place on the sidelines of a week-long UN crime conference attended by some 800 ministers and civil society representatives.
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