An alleged deal between government officials and illegal miners in Brazil’s Amazon led to the latter being provided with weapons in order to better secure their illicit earnings and fend…
There was record destruction of the Amazon in 2020, as the rainforest lost an area around the size of Belize, and the situation looks to be even bleaker in 2021.
At around 11 p.m. on April 6, 2020, Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Solís was returning to the military base he commanded near the town of Tumeremo in the eastern Venezuela state…
On November 5, 2019, threatening pamphlets appeared on the streets of El Callao, a mining town in Venezuela's eastern state of Bolívar.
The scale of illegal mining on an Indigenous reserve deep in Brazil’s Amazon has grown so large that fleets of small aircraft are landing on remote airstrips to truck in…
The presence of corrupt actors who have a vested interest in allowing environmental crime to happen coupled with an overall lack of capacity, resources and political will to combat related…
From ornamental fish trafficking to land grabbing, corruption greases the wheels of every environmental crime motor, feeding deforestation and biodiversity loss in Colombia’s Amazon region.
As gold prices have skyrocketed, criminal groups once solely dedicated to the trafficking of drugs and arms have moved into illegal mining.
Emerging from almost six decades of civil conflict, the world’s number one cocaine producer has paid scant attention to environmental crime.
Authorities in Peru have dismantled a ring that sold explosives to gangs involved in illegal mining, showing how dangerous products needed to mine gold generate illicit profits.
Seizures of coltan in Colombia have shown the complex networks used by armed groups to smuggle the valuable mineral from illegal mines across the border in Venezuela.
A former army lieutenant allegedly recruited Venezuelan soldiers to provide firepower for the Tren de Guayana gang in a bid to take over gold mining operations in southern Venezuela, revealing…
About InSight Crime
InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board
This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…
InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan
InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…
InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation
Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…
Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper
Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…
InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate
This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…
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