Smuggling, legal security and supply chains

On the eve of the 30th Ibero-American Summit, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior announced the Special Security Plan that will govern the summit. In this context, it is crucial to discuss the most effective measures to address organized crime and transnational economic structures that cross borders, whose impact is reflected in the increased sense of insecurity and crime in various countries of the region.

Since the creation of the National Association Against Illicit Economies (ANEI) in Chile, we have observed how these groups have evolved into increasingly sophisticated systems that move billions of dollars and have infiltrated critical infrastructure, such as ports and border crossings. However, they do not always operate through the most “violent” crimes, such as drug trafficking or the trafficking of people and weapons.

Criminal enterprises analyze different markets and diversify to generate capital quickly, frequently resorting to activities with lesser penalties, such as illegal trade, smuggling, piracy, and product counterfeiting , which constitute some of their main financial arms.

This amounts to a loss for everyone. Public coffers lose resources through tax evasion ; local businesses have no chance of competing against black market prices; and the general public faces, on the one hand, products without health permits that could endanger their health (for example, with cosmetics, food, and technology items) and, on the other hand, neighborhoods taken over by veritable mafias that occupy public space and foster crime.

For multinational companies with regional operations, the infiltration of illicit trade into their logistics networks represents more than a “marginal” cost. With products increasingly difficult to visually distinguish from legitimate brands, there are cases where even the formal market has failed to identify fraudulent suppliers, posing a direct risk to corporate reputation and consumer health . This not only occurs in the physical realm; there is also a vast “digital divide ,” especially surrounding cultural content such as books, which directly impacts copyright and the publishing industry, and which is very complex to address regionally due to legislative disparities between countries.
 

The solution

 
The free movement of legal goods relies on the certainty that the rules work, on oversight by authorities and police, and on their strict enforcement. When ports, border crossings, free trade zones, or digital sales platforms become porous, public trust deteriorates, private security costs skyrocket, and governments lose significant tax revenue.

This vicious cycle forces countries to allocate more public resources to the prosecution of organized crime, the oversight, storage and destruction of illegal goods.

Faced with this adverse situation, one response has been the development of initiatives, many of them born from public-private collaboration , aimed at consolidating technical and financial cooperation networks with regulatory bodies. Furthermore, the legal certainty of regulatory frameworks constitutes a fundamental guarantee of neutrality and efficiency; therefore, it is essential to ensure institutional channels between countries to protect cross-border trade.

However, safeguarding regulations requires a cross-cutting approach , where everyone must contribute. In Chile, for example, a country where illicit economies move more than US$5.7 billion annually (CPC, 2026), significant progress has been made by chambers of commerce and universities. Along these lines, ANEI also seeks to contribute by bringing together companies from sectors directly affected by these crimes, which provide information and resources to work alongside the authorities. At the international level, initiatives such as the Latin American Anti-Smuggling Alliance (ALAC) , created in 2016, demonstrate the value of uniting different sectors to unify regional policy and regulatory criteria against illicit economies.

On the other hand, securing logistical routes and cutting off the financial support of organized crime (the “money trails”) is essential for legal certainty and trade stability.

The region faces the dilemma of positioning itself as a solid destination for international capital, a task that demands confronting the networks that finance crime.

Activating all available agencies to promote effective public policies is the starting point for eradicating illicit economies and ensuring transparent and sustainable economic development for the entire region.