The Minister for Justice, the Hon Michael Keenan MP, and Australian Crime Commission CEO Chris Dawson today released the Organised Crime in Australia 2015 report.
In his press release ‘Organised crime remains significant threat to Australia’, also from May 20, Minister Keenan said that organised criminal gangs represent an ongoing threat to this country. “They are violent predators who profit from the misery of their evil trades – drugs, guns, extortion, prostitution and even child exploitation,” he said.
According to Minister Keenan, the Organised Crime in Australia 2015 report reveals that “serious and organised crime in Australia:
- still relies on the illicit drug market as its principle source of profit (more than 60 per cent of Australia’s highest risk criminal targets are involved in the methylamphetamine market and are driving the market’s expansion);
- is exploiting new technologies and online environments (online scams, identify fraud, credit card fraud and exchange of illicit items such as firearms and drugs through online darknet transactions);
- is integrating criminal activities into legitimate markets (laundering money through legitimate industries such as real estate, using the freight industry to transport illicit drugs); and
- is truly globalised, without fear of state, federal or even international laws.”
The report is an unclassified version of the Australian Crime Commission’s biennial Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA) series, which forms part of the Picture of Criminality in Australia suite of products. The OCTA is a classified assessment of the level of risk posed by various organised crime threats, categorised by activity, market and enabler.