Definition
106 jurisdictions · 4 instruments · 6 corridors.
What are illicit flows? Illicit goods, illicit trade and trafficking
Illicit flows are the movements of goods and value across borders that take place outside the controls meant to govern them. The word doing the work in that sentence is illicit, and it is not a synonym for illegal. Illegal describes conduct some law prohibits. Illicit covers that, and also covers conduct which evades a control without breaching a prohibition, and conduct whose legality changes depending on which side of a frontier it is on. Most of this subject sits in the second and third categories, which is why an account built on the word illegal describes only a part of it.
Illicit activity, illicit goods and the difference between them
An illicit activity is not always an activity involving illegal goods. Four patterns account for most trafficking in illicit goods, and confusing them is the commonest error in secondary accounts of the subject.
- Goods illegal in themselves. Narcotics are the clear case: possession, supply and movement are each prohibited, and the commodity carries its illegality with it.
- Goods lawful to hold but controlled in trade. Firearms and precursor chemicals are ordinary articles of commerce. The offence is the diversion out of licit trade, not the article, which is why 23 of the 106 jurisdictions here being outside the Firearms Protocol matters: without a marking and record-keeping obligation there is nothing against which a diversion can be shown.
- Goods lawful everywhere, moved to avoid duty or licensing. Illegal goods is the wrong description for most illicit tobacco or counterfeit consumer products. The cargo is exactly what the manifest says; what is false is a declaration about it. See grey markets.
- Goods whose legality changes at the border. Here an exporter and an importer can each be entirely compliant with their own law and the transaction can still be an illicit flow, because the control that was evaded belongs to neither of them alone.
Why the money and the goods are one subject
Illicit trade is usually reported as a problem about commodities and illicit finance as a problem about banks. They are the same problem observed at two points. A consignment that moves generates a payment that has to move back, and it moves back through the same relationships, the same intermediaries and frequently the same documents. Trade mis-invoicing is the clearest instance: nothing is smuggled at all, the shipment is declared and cleared, and the value crosses the border on a false number written on a real invoice. The mechanism is set out under trade-based money laundering.
That is also why the legal framework overlaps as much as it does. Three of the four instruments tracked here reach the proceeds as well as the conduct, and the confiscation machinery a trafficking case depends on is generally the machinery a laundering case depends on. What each instrument obliges a party to do is set out once, per instrument, under illicit finance.
Where the flows run
Illicit flows are not diffuse. They concentrate on a small number of routes, for the ordinary reasons any trade concentrates: existing transport infrastructure, a usable port or airport, and a legal order that is easier to cross than its neighbours. This reference profiles 6 named corridors across 50 jurisdictions — three carrying heroin out of Afghan production and three carrying cocaine out of the Andes — and compares the legal position of every leg of each. A corridor exploits differences between adjacent jurisdictions rather than weakness in any one of them, which is why the comparison is the useful unit. The profiles are at trafficking corridors, and the routes themselves are described under drug routes.
What this reference states, and what it does not
The size of illicit flows is the question most often asked about them and the one least answerable. Every headline figure is built on a proxy, because the thing being measured is defined by not being recorded, and the two common proxies measure different phenomena from each other. No aggregate estimate appears anywhere in this register for that reason.
What can be stated is the legal position, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, with a source and a check date on every line: the treaty dates from the depositary's own status tables, the national instruments where an official register confirms them, the enforcement bodies where a jurisdiction's own government hosts name them, and the current monitoring status. 81 of the 106 jurisdictions covered are party to all four instruments and 91 carry at least one confirmed national instrument. The records are at the jurisdiction index, and how each layer is verified is under sources and methodology.
Questions about illicit flows
What does illicit mean, and how is it different from illegal?
Illegal describes conduct a specific law prohibits. Illicit is broader and, in this field, more useful: it covers conduct that is prohibited, conduct that evades a control without breaking a prohibition, and conduct whose legality depends on where it is happening. A shipment of cigarettes is not illegal goods anywhere in itself; it becomes an illicit flow when it moves without the duty being paid. That is why the subject is described as illicit trade rather than illegal trade — the second word would exclude most of it.
What are illicit flows?
The movement of goods, people or value across borders outside the controls that are supposed to govern it. The phrase covers two things that are usually treated separately: illicit goods moving one way — narcotics, weapons, wildlife, counterfeits, untaxed tobacco — and the proceeds moving back the other. This reference treats them as one subject because the same corridors, the same intermediaries and the same documents carry both, and because the law that addresses them is largely the same 4 instruments.
What does illicit trafficking mean?
Trafficking is the organised movement of something across a border in breach of the controls on it, as distinct from possession at one end or sale at the other. The distinction is not academic: the conventions oblige states to criminalise trafficking specifically, and a statute that reaches only possession and supply leaves the transport stage outside the offence. Which is why this dataset records the national instrument separately from the treaty position — being bound to criminalise trafficking and having an offence a prosecutor can charge are different facts.
What counts as trafficking in illicit goods?
Four categories account for most of it, and they behave differently. Goods illegal in themselves, where any movement is an offence. Goods legal to hold but controlled in trade, such as firearms and precursor chemicals, where the offence is the diversion rather than the commodity. Goods legal everywhere but moved to avoid duty or licensing, which is most illicit tobacco and much counterfeiting. And goods whose legality changes at the border, which is where an exporter and an importer can each be compliant and the transaction still be an illicit flow.
How large are illicit flows?
No figure appears anywhere in this reference, and the reason is methodological rather than editorial. Seizure totals measure enforcement activity as much as trafficking: a rise can mean more goods moving or more inspectors looking. Trade-gap estimates, the usual basis for financial figures, compare what one country reports exporting against what its partner reports importing, and capture ordinary reporting error, freight timing and currency conversion alongside deliberate misstatement. A number derived from either would carry a precision the method cannot support.
What can be stated precisely, then?
The legal position, which is what this reference records. For each of the 106 source and transit jurisdictions covered: which of the 4 instruments it is party to and on what date, which national statutes an official register confirms, which enforcement bodies its own government hosts name, and where it stands in the financial-monitoring process. 81 of the 106 are party to all four instruments and 91 carry at least one confirmed national instrument, and every line names its source and the date it was checked.