‘Moisés Naím has spotted that most crucial of things, a subject of increasing importance that is very poorly understood. His book should provoke much new thinking and, it is to be hoped, new action.’ Bill Emmott, Editor, the Economist Any newspaper anywhere in the world, any day, carries news about illegal migrants, drug busts, smuggled weapons, laundered money, or counterfeit goods. These newly globalized struggles pit governments against agile, well-financed networks of highly dedicated individuals. Religious zeal or political goals drive terrorists, but profit is no less a motivator for murder and mayhem. And the stakes are rising. It is estimated that the global trafficking of people is worth more than billion a year. In Southeast Asia, an estimated 30 million women and children have been trafficked – in the past ten years. Who supplies pirated movies, CDs, or the knock-off Rolex sold for ? Why is marijuana ever easier to find in schools and universities? Who is behind the illegal immigrants found suffocated to death in the backs of lorries? Illicit is the first book to reveal the shocking scale of this dark underground, and to show how the inner workings of the networks of illegal industries and new realities of globalisation combine to make them so successful and difficult to defeat.