Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement Inquiry into Criminal Activity and Law Enforcement during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

A wide range of likely impacts from increased risks of domestic violence due to economic stress and ‘stay at home’ public health orders, business failure, police and emergency service fatigue, higher risks of infection in prisons amongst others are some of the many challenges wrought by COVID-19. This submission focuses on two issues in relation to transnational and serious organised crime and the impact of COVID-19 on underground online illicit markets and the convergence of organised crime groups across the Indo-Pacific region.First concerns the role of illicit crypto-markets (‘darknets’) in the diversion and black market sale of medicines and products associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the adaption of these markets to the criminal opportunities presented by the pandemic. The second issue is the scale and acceleration of illicit drug production, notably of synthetic opioids, novel psychoactive substance (NPS) and amphetamine type stimulants (ATS) in Southeast Asia and the convergence of criminal (network) interdependencies between Chinese ‘black societies’ (triads) and their collaborators