The “Fifth Wave” of Transnational Organised Crime in Latin America

Over the past decade, Latin America has borne witness to a gradual yet profound transformation of transnational organised crime, the full implications of which are still not widely understood. The phenomenon can no longer be analysed using traditional categories such as drug trafficking or the notion of hierarchically structured organisations with visible leaders. Organised crime has taken on more complex, adaptive, and resilient forms. It is capable of integrating into global economic flows, assuming governance functions in certain areas, and exercising political power.

This process can be understood as a further development of the so-called “fourth wave” of transnational organised crime,¹ which is characterised by the growing interconnection of different illegal economic sectors, flexible transnational networks, the partial infiltration of institutions, and the emergence of a form of extra-legal governance in which organised crime in certain contexts takes on quasi-sovereign functions beyond the framework of state law. It is a phase in which organised crime moves beyond its role as a hidden actor and becomes a kind of parallel system that replaces state order, generates revenue, and exercises power.

In order to grasp the significance of this transformation, it must be placed in historical context. The “first wave” of organised crime centred on the rise of the Medellín Cartel under Pablo Escobar, which produced cocaine on a massive scale for the US market, deployed extreme violence against the state, and pursued a strategy of controlling ever-larger territories. The “second wave” was dominated by the Cali Cartel: Rather than confronting the state directly, it relied on corruption and infiltration. Its links with Mexican cartels reshaped smuggling routes and transformed money-laundering mechanisms. The “third wave” was marked by the progressive criminalisation of entire states, particularly those located in regions that were strategically important for production and transport, and for the protection of illegal economic activities. Normative standards were deliberately shifted, institutions weakened, and the rule of law systematically exploited. In this way, armed non-state actors and highly capable criminal groups created conditions that enabled them to embed themselves – formally or informally – within state structures. This process blurred the line between governments and transnational criminal organisations beyond recognition, thereby giving rise to what some analysts describe as criminalised states – that is, entities in which politics and crime are not in competition but effectively merge or at least mutually reinforce each other.

The “fourth wave” of organised crime in Latin America combines elements of all these earlier phases while also introducing something qualitatively new. For the first time, highly developed actors from other regions are playing a major role: the Italian ’Ndrangheta, Balkan clans, Turkish syndicates, and even Chinese networks that supply precursor materials. These actors operate together with Latin American criminal organisations in a dynamic, transnational criminal ecosystem that adapts to emerging opportunities and increasingly operates independently of specific states and territories.

Understanding this “fourth wave” is one thing. More important, however, is recognising that the outlines of a “fifth wave” are already emerging – a wave that will be even more complex, demanding, and potentially dangerous. This new stage of development will be characterised by the use of cutting-edge technologies and artificial intelligence, by the automation of illegal activities, and – crucially – by strategic competition in the public sphere. This involves attempts to legitimise, conceal, or normalise illegal economic activities within the legal economy by drawing on a transactional political logic with populist or authoritarian tendencies.

Much more than drug trafficking

For decades, analyses of organised crime have been shaped by a narrow focus on drug trafficking. Now in the “fourth wave”, however, criminal organisations are already operating as diversified economic conglomerates. They are simultaneously active in multiple illicit markets, including in drug and human trafficking, smuggling, illegal mining, financial fraud, arms trafficking, and cybercrime.

All of these activities cause human harm and often result in environmental damage. Moreover, they do not occur in isolation, instead forming part of an integrated “ecosystem” aimed at maximising profits while minimising risk to the criminal organisations themselves.

One defining feature of this phase is the shift from vertically structured organisations to more horizontal, modular structures. Their complexity is not yet fully understood and will require new conceptual frameworks. For the time being, they may be described as forms of “exo-criminality”² – a phenomenon that does not rely on centralised strategic planning and that instead capitalises on external conditions such as social crises, mass migration, and institutional collapse. This new structure makes criminal networks more resilient to state intervention. Their decentralised organisation makes them difficult for authorities to dismantle completely; meanwhile, they maintain constant internal exchange through the extensive use of modern communication technologies, specialised intermediaries, and strategically formed, transactional alliances.

Globalisation of organised crime

In this context, the globalisation of organised crime has reached unprecedented levels. Latin America has become a key hub for global illicit economic flows, particularly with regard to the smuggling of cocaine to Europe. Criminal networks from the Old Continent – especially from Albania – have established a foothold in Latin America and disrupted existing structures, thereby showing a remarkable ability to insert themselves independently into the key stages of this business, including in financing, logistics, distribution, and money laundering.

The figures speak for themselves. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),³ global cocaine production reached a new record of 3,708 tonnes in 2023 – an increase of 34 per cent compared with in the previous year – while the number of users worldwide has grown from 17 million to 25 million within the past decade. Europe has emerged as one of the fastest-growing markets, with 323 tonnes seized in the EU in 2022. In the following year, 116 tonnes were confiscated in the port of Antwerp alone. According to Europol, in 2024, around 70 per cent of the cocaine entering Europe came through Antwerp and Amsterdam.⁴ Albanian networks have played a key role in this development. Between 2012 and 2018, they secured direct access for suppliers from Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela by bribing port officials. In so doing, they drove down the price of a kilogram of cocaine in the Netherlands from 30,000 to 23,000 euros, thereby bringing entire segments of the European market under their control.

Unlike other actors, Albanian groups generally prefer to remain in the background and avoid media attention, instead relying on pragmatic relationships with local organisations and political actors. Their key strength lies in their ability to connect to global markets at any time. This is supported in particular by their detailed knowledge of European markets and their capacity to launder large volumes of drug money through sophisticated mechanisms. In a context of cocaine overproduction in the Andean region, these networks have helped optimise routes, improve transport efficiency, and open new markets.

One telling example is the case of Dritan Rexhepi, an Albanian national who – after escaping from prisons in Albania, the Netherlands, and Belgium – settled in Ecuador in 2012. From there, he operated as a logistics entrepreneur, organising cocaine flows to European ports such as Antwerp, Gioia Tauro, and Thessaloniki. His role was not that of a traditional, visible crime boss; instead, he adopted the guise of a discreet businessman, establishing banana import companies that mixed legitimate cargo with drugs. An investigation by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies⁵ identified six Albanian companies importing bananas from Ecuador that had been linked to cocaine seizures since 2014. Most of them continued operating after making only superficial changes to their management, thereby highlighting the resilience of these networks in the face of law enforcement.

The cocaine surplus has also created competitive pressure that acts as a driver of criminal innovation. Organisations are constantly seeking to reduce costs, diversify risks, and secure distribution points. As a result, ports and international logistics chains have become strategically contested spaces. The infiltration of these infrastructures not only facilitates drug smuggling, but also opens the door to other forms of illicit economic activity.

Maritime transport and ports have therefore become key risk factors for democracies in Latin America as well as for consumer markets in Europe. A combination of corruption, coercion, and operational intelligence enables criminal networks to penetrate port systems, manipulate containers, recruit port workers, and exploit technical vulnerabilities. All of this undermines security, distorts economic competition, and erodes trust in global trading systems.

The co-option of port officials is a central tool in this process. Criminal groups recruit individuals who work on the docks, who operate scanners, or who are employed in customs. This is often done through bribery, but sometimes also through threats against these individuals’ families. EU ports handle around 90 million containers each year, yet authorities are only able to inspect between two and ten per cent of them. In Antwerp, the infiltration of port structures by organised crime has reached such a level that the president of the city’s court of appeal publicly raised the alarm this year: “The amount of money used to influence, bribe, and corrupt individuals is so great that it poses a real threat to the stability of our society”⁶. This is no longer an external problem for Europe; indeed, it is already a European problem.

Extra-legal governance

At the same time, the “fourth wave” of organised crime in Latin America has led to the spread of what can be described as extra-legal governance. In areas where the state is weak or perceived as illegitimate, criminal organisations have assumed quasi-state functions. They regulate markets without resistance, enforce norms, resolve disputes, and provide security. This is particularly evident in urban slums, rural regions, and – with serious consequences – in Latin American prisons.

This form of governance is not based on violence alone. It is able to take hold because it provides order and predictability in contexts otherwise characterised by insecurity and uncertainty. From the perspective of the populations concerned, criminal organisations are often simply those that offer practical solutions, thereby granting them a form of functional legitimacy.

As already noted, prisons in Latin America have become a focal point of these developments. In many countries, they are no longer places of state control; rather, they are effectively operational centres for criminal activity. It is from here that organisations coordinate their activities, manage illicit economic flows, and project influence externally. The loss of state control over prisons not only weakens the ability to enforce punishment effectively, but also fosters the emergence of increasingly complex and well-organised criminal structures.

The Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua illustrates this process particularly clearly. The organisation emerged in Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua, where it initially established control over the facility. Soon, the prison featured a swimming pool, sports facilities, a restaurant, and a discotheque. From there, the group began to govern entire communities, collect pseudo-taxes, settle disputes, and provide services that the Venezuelan state could not deliver. This model of extra-legal governance subsequently expanded to more than a dozen Venezuelan federal states before moving into Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina, with the organisation exploiting the exodus of millions of Venezuelan migrants. The US government under Donald Trump designated Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organisation in 2025. What is particularly striking is that this group is not an isolated case. Similar developments can be observed today in Ecuador and Brazil as well as in the most overcrowded prisons in Mexico and Central America.

The end result of this process is not a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law, but a form of “functional rule of law” with populist or authoritarian characteristics that serves corrupt and criminal interests and that hollows out the very principles it claims to uphold.

Organised crime as a political actor

In this context, organised crime increasingly behaves like a rational political actor.⁷ This is accompanied by a growing capacity to influence decision-making, to take control of institutions, and to shape the regulatory environment itself. In various settings, criminal organisations finance election campaigns, co-opt decision-makers, or agree on informal arrangements with political actors. This type of interaction changes the nature of the problem as it appeared in the “fourth wave”. In the future, it will no longer be sufficient to combat criminal organisations; indeed, the integrity of the democratic system itself will have to be defended.

There are numerous concrete examples of this infiltration of politics. Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the United States and was sentenced there in June 2024 to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking after it had been proven that he had accepted millions of US dollars from the Sinaloa Cartel – and from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán personally – in exchange for state protection and assistance in facilitating the shipment of more than 400 tonnes of cocaine to the US market. On 1 December 2025, Hernández was granted a full and unconditional pardon by Donald Trump, who argued that the trial had been politically motivated by the Biden administration. Analysts and members of Congress from both parties pointed out the contradiction between this decision and the current US administration’s anti-drug policy, while legal experts in Honduras described it as an affront to the judiciary.

Former Mexican minister of public security Genaro García Luna was also convicted in the United States for links to the Sinaloa Cartel. In Guatemala, corrupt networks attempted through legal means to prevent the inauguration of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo in January 2024, while in Spain, the head of the economic and financial crime unit of the Madrid police was arrested on suspicion of links to drug trafficking: Investigators had found 20 million euros in cash at his home. Indeed, the ability of organised crime to buy strategically important state actors does not stop at national borders.

The transition to a “fifth wave” of organised crime will intensify these trends and further increase the complexity of the problem. The use of advanced technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – will enable criminal organisations to optimise operations, to automate processes, and to expand their sphere of influence. From the use of algorithms for money laundering, the creation of virtual identities, and the manipulation of data to the systematic spread of disinformation, organised crime is increasingly operating in areas that are ever more difficult to detect and regulate.

The battle over narratives

Perhaps the most disruptive element of this “fifth wave” of organised crime will be the battle over who controls the narrative in public discourse. At a time when information circulates at extreme speed and perceptions directly affect the legitimacy of institutions, criminal organisations will seek to establish narratives that normalise their actions, that delegitimise the state, and that even create the impression that their activities enjoy social acceptance. This is a symbolic struggle that serves the true primary objective of organised crime: namely to channel its profits into the legal economy.

The real battleground is therefore economic as well as cultural. Money laundering is no longer confined to traditional mechanisms: Today, it also takes place through trade, technology, the entertainment industry, and the real estate market. The ability to turn dirty money into legal assets allows criminal networks to remain economically viable over the long term. In the “fifth wave”, this capacity is likely to be enhanced by technological tools that both make financial flows harder to trace and enable increasingly sophisticated operations.

One thing is clear: The transition from the “fourth wave” to the “fifth wave” of organised crime is one of the greatest challenges currently facing Latin America. It is not merely a security problem: It is a structural threat to democracy, to the economy, and to social cohesion.

Those who fail to understand this transition will inevitably underestimate the scale of the phenomenon. In concrete terms, this means ceding sovereignty in certain areas and territories to actors that are quietly reshaping the present and future of our societies through a logic of power, technology, and profit.

What can be done?

In the face of these challenges, conventional counterstrategies are no longer remotely sufficient. While criminal prosecution of course remains necessary, it must be embedded in a broader mix of measures, including investigative capacities, international cooperation, public–private partnerships, the regulation of modern technologies, and the strengthening of institutions. The transnational nature of the phenomenon also requires unprecedented cooperation between states, particularly in information sharing, financial oversight, and port security.

International cooperation has two dimensions: Alongside the operational level, there must also be a shared political strategy to defend the rule of law. This additionally means that the fight against organised crime must not degenerate into practices that themselves weaken democratic principles. After all, the legitimacy of the state is one of its key advantages over criminal organisations, even if the latter constantly seek to undermine this legitimacy.

At the domestic level, it is of fundamental importance to make progress in reclaiming spaces where extra-legal governance has taken hold. This requires a comprehensive approach that combines security, social development, and the strengthening of state institutions. State presence must be effective, but it must also be legitimate. Territories should not merely be controlled; rather, they must actually be governed.

It is further essential to combat illegal economic flows by targeting their underlying economic logic. As long as these activities remain highly profitable, they will continue to spread. Such an approach must focus above all on reducing incentives, on strengthening financial control systems, and on promoting inclusive legal opportunities to earn a living.

The Latin American spectre haunting Europe

What is happening in Latin America today also concerns Europe. It is likely a preview of what awaits the European continent if it does not act with the determination the situation demands. Europe is no longer simply a target market for Latin American cocaine; rather, it is a theatre in which transnational organised crime is attempting to replicate the very strategies of institutional infiltration, political co-option, and extra-legal governance that it has perfected over decades in the Andes and Central America. The warning signs are unmistakable. In Belgium and the Netherlands, judicial authorities complain that drug-related crime is increasingly taking forms previously associated only with Medellín or Ciudad Juárez: targeted killings, car bombs, and the intimidation of prosecutors and journalists. Dutch journalist Peter R. de Vries – who reported on links between organised crime and politics – was murdered in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam in 2021. It was a tragic and dramatic sign that organised crime is beginning to attack those who get too close to it, as has long been the case in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Cocaine smuggling routes to Europe – and also to Oceania – are expanding and becoming increasingly diversified. Ever since controls were stepped up in Antwerp and Rotterdam, smugglers have begun testing smaller ports with weaker security arrangements in the Mediterranean and on the continent’s periphery. Spain and Portugal have become some of the most important alternative entry points. In France, more than 50 tonnes of cocaine were seized in 2023 – more than twice as much as the year before. However, the risk is not confined to drug trafficking. Criminal networks launder their money in the European real estate market, in the entertainment sector, and through other services. The model of gradual capture of state institutions implemented in Honduras and Guatemala can be replicated in any democracy whose institutions are weakened, overburdened, or infiltrated.

What then should Europe do? First, it should acknowledge that the problem extends beyond its borders. Cooperation with Latin America on financial investigations, port controls, and the confiscation of illicit assets is not charity; rather, it is in Europe’s own strategic interest. Second, Europe should invest heavily in the security of its critical infrastructure, beginning with its ports. The model tested by Europol in Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg indicates progress, but it will not be enough without sufficient resources, technical equipment, and an institutional culture that places security above logistical efficiency. Third, the EU urgently needs to establish common mechanisms to combat transnational money laundering. Criminals operate across borders with ease, while European judicial systems remain fragmented. The new EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority, AMLA – which is due to begin work in 2028 – is a step in the right direction, but the planned timelines and resources do not match the pace at which criminal organisations move.

Finally, Europe should openly and honestly confront the fact that European demand for drugs is what keeps the system running. As long as 25 million cocaine users worldwide, an increasing share of them living in Europe, create a market worth tens of billions of euros each year, there will be organisations willing to take every risk to serve that market. Public programmes that combat addiction are not only a matter of health policy; indeed, they also serve national security. Europe has been unwilling to recognise this for too long, and Latin America has been paying the bloody price for decades. The question Europe’s policymakers must ask themselves today is no longer whether the same thing could happen on their continent; rather, the question is whether there is still enough time to prevent it.

– translated from Spanish –

Pablo Zeballos is a Chilean researcher and consultant specialising in transnational organised crime. He spent decades working for Chile’s security forces.

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