Enhancing Cross-Border Security through Leveraged Public-Private Partnerships and A Global Network to Counter Money Laundering
In 2026, ICAIE will be releasing not only our new ICAIE Report on Transaction Laundering (“Criminals Accelerating Illicit Trade by Exploiting Digital Markets and Modern Threat Finance Landscapes”), but also working diligently to advance public-private partnerships to counter illicit economies and related money laundering and threat finance including by participating in numerous diplomatic fora in Arusha, Bangkok, Geneva, London, New York City, Paris, Punta Cana (DR), São Paulo, Singapore, and Washington DC.
In an increasingly complex world – one that seems to be upside down at times – markets and governments face an array of illicit vectors (poly threats) through a confluence of geopolitical instability, transnational crime, terrorism, armed conflicts, catastrophic climate, and rapid technological disruptions, for example, that are creating global chaos and insecurity across economies, societies, and systems; and are becoming more difficult to monitor, detect, and respond to than ever before.
These cross-border threats and risks present opportunities for greater innovation, mutually-shared data, and dynamic solutions for sectors to come together to address them in partnership, and through leveraged intelligence and joint resources.
Across such transnational security landscapes, we need to strategically position more pragmatic public-private partnerships to lead renewed efforts to confront such threat convergence.
In doing so, we must fine-tune our respective frames of reference, better understand the current threat environment, and transform the way we think about transnational threats.
We cannot divine solutions if we fail to comprehend the full dimensions of a challenge, much less the interlinkages among policy threats or the connectivity among disparate parts and dissimilar actions.
For example, in fighting transnational crime, we need to be smarter on how we can more effectively employ our capabilities and resources to combat not only the battle against the drug cartels and criminal groups, but the manner in which we exploit and target the linked webs of corruption and illicit vectors in our strategies in disrupting criminalized trade, their logistics, underlying infrastructure, and financial wherewithal.
We must redouble our cross-sectoral intelligence collection and analytical abilities and obtain the necessary market insights, governance gaps, and/or data overlays to better understand the interconnectedness between disparate criminal and other threat networks; and to SURFACE them – so that we can overwhelm the architecture and enterprising ventures that sustains and finances their operations across hubs of illicit trade, facilitates their travel (illicit pathways), movements (routes) of illicit goods and contraband, and illicit financial flows and dirty monies (or “value trails”).
In other words, by applying full spectrum capabilities in dismantling inter-connected threat networks, we will be equipped to finally unravel the webs of criminality and corruption that often runs through the criminal-threat convergence continuum around the world.
In sum, leveraged Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are critical for security because they combine government resources with private sector agility, tech expertise (AI, data analytics), and other innovations for stronger, more comprehensive, resilient, and unified defenses against modern security challenges and threats, and for the protection and safety of all communities.
David M. Luna is the Executive Director of the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE) and a former U.S. diplomat and national security official charged with strengthening international cooperation and public-private partnerships on fighting crime convergence threats including the inter-connected links between drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations, illicit trade networks, terrorist groups and related corruption and money laundering.
