NEWS: South-East Asia becomes global hub for scam operations, UN warns

Regulatory Watch News

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  New UNODC report reveals scale of South-East Asia’s ever more interconnected criminal economy

  UNODC

  July 21, 2026

  South-East Asia’s criminal ecosystem has undergone a fundamental restructuring, according to a new report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Once-fragmented, locally rooted syndicates have merged into a single transnational, tech-driven criminal economy sophisticated enough to outpace conventional law enforcement and threaten governance, economic stability, and development in the region and beyond. “What we are seeing is a shift in which groups that stayed within their own geographic domain and criminal specialty are now operating across multiple illicit markets at once, relying on the same service streams,” said Delphine Schantz, UNODC Regional Representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific, during the report launch today in Bangkok. “Their operating model looks like corporate franchising: imagine specialized departments for laundering money, trafficking people, smuggling migrants, and harvesting data, all plugged into the same, service-based interconnected network.”

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  Bosnia and Herzegovina: GRECO publishes latest compliance report on corruption prevention in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors

  GRECO

  July 21, 2026

  GRECO has today made public its Fourth Interim Compliance Report on Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Fourth Evaluation Round, setting out an assessment of the progress made by Bosnia and Herzegovina in implementing GRECO’s recommendations to prevent corruption in respect of members of parliament, judges and prosecutors. The report was adopted by GRECO at its 103^rd Plenary Meeting, held in Strasbourg from 8 to 12 June 2026.

  Bosnia and Herzegovina has implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner six of the fifteen recommendations contained in the Fourth Round Evaluation Report. Of the outstanding recommendations, eight have been partly implemented and one remains not implemented. As a result, Bosnia and Herzegovina is no longer subject to GRECO's non-compliance procedure.

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  Italy: EPPO seizes €20 million in probe into suspected RRF fraud involving fake training courses

  European Public Prosecutor's Office

  July 21, 2026

  (Luxembourg, 21 July 2026) – The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Milan (Italy) has seized around €20 million held in bank accounts and insurance policies linked to five companies, as part of an ongoing investigation into suspected fraud involving funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). The assets are linked to two suspects already subject to precautionary measures for suspected aggravated fraud involving public funds and self-laundering.