
Rise In Production And Trafficking Of Synthetic Drugs From The Golden Triangle, New Report Shows
'The 236 tons represent only the amount seized, and just so much methamphetamine is actually reaching the market,' said Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC Acting Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. 'While these seizures reflect, in part, successful law enforcement efforts, we are clearly seeing unprecedented levels of methamphetamine production and trafficking from the Golden Triangle, in particular Shan State.'
The report, titled Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: Latest Developments and Challenges, shows that the production and trafficking of methamphetamine in Shan State, Myanmar, have significantly increased since 2021. 'The ongoing crisis in Myanmar is further increasing the need for proceeds from the drug trade, but at the same time there is a degree of stability in certain parts of the country, especially those known for large-scale synthetic drug production,' Hofmann said. 'This combination of conflict and stability has created favourable conditions for the expansion of drug production, impacting countries across the region and beyond.'
Thailand remained the main transit and destination point for methamphetamine trafficked from Myanmar and recorded the largest quantity of methamphetamine seizures in the region, including one billion tablets of yaba – a combination of methamphetamine and caffeine popular in many parts of Southeast Asia due to its easy availability and low price. At the same time, transnational drug trafficking groups have increasingly exploited emerging trafficking routes to evade law enforcement detection.
'The trafficking route connecting Cambodia with Myanmar, primarily through Lao PDR, has been rapidly expanding,' said Inshik Sim, Lead Analyst at the UNODC Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. 'Another increasingly significant corridor involves maritime trafficking routes linking Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with Sabah in Malaysia serving as a key transit hub.'
The report highlights the evolving nature of transnational drug trafficking groups operating in East and Southeast Asia. These groups have demonstrated remarkable agility in reacting to law enforcement pressure, as shown by the spread of production sites for ketamine and related precursor chemicals, which has now reached most of the lower Mekong countries. Authorities in Viet Nam dismantled an industrial-scale facility in March 2025.
Another example is the rise in the illicit manufacture of pharmaceutical products, especially etomidate and its analogues, designed to evade controls on novel substances. The report also underscores the growing use of technology across the entire chain of drug-related crimes, from planning, coordination, and the execution of trafficking to financial transactions and money laundering linked to the synthetic drug trade.
'With the surge in synthetic drug production and trafficking in the region, most countries report an overall increase in the use of methamphetamine and ketamine,' Hofmann said. 'However, in some countries, we are seeing a decline in the number of younger drug users admitted to treatment facilities, which may be attributable to drug use prevention campaigns targeting youth populations,' he added. 'It will be key for the region to increase investment in both prevention and supply reduction strategies.'
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NZ Herald
3 days ago
- NZ Herald
Global ‘mining mafia' feeds China's appetite for gold, investigation shows
As part of a strategic effort to reduce reliance on the US dollar, insulate itself from potential United States sanctions and build its own capacity to influence the international monetary system, China is procuring gold at a voracious pace. This drive has fuelled and facilitated a surge in illicit gold mining across the Global South, inflicting a trail of environmental destruction from Indonesia to Ghana to French Guiana, a Washington Post investigation found. The Post examination of China's role in the booming trade in illicit gold is based on a review of satellite imagery, trade data, public records, and dozens of interviews with gold researchers, law enforcement and government officials across three continents. In Indonesia, where the proliferation of illicit mining has been among the most widespread and least studied, the Post obtained internal government documents and visited half a dozen secluded gold-mining communities being transformed by Chinese-led operations. Chinese workers at these locations declined to speak to the Post, but Chinese mining operators in Indonesia said in interviews that investment in the country's gold sector is spiking. In videos aimed at investors on Chinese social media, Chinese miners advertise 'free and easy' access to Indonesia's vast gold deposits. In May, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned that organised crime was embedding itself so deeply in gold supply chains that it poses a 'serious global threat'. As Chinese demand drives gold prices above US$3000 per ounce, drug cartels, terrorists, and mercenary groups are deepening their involvement in the sector, UNODC said. Almost all these actors work in some capacity with Chinese mining concerns, which are present from 'mine to market' and have the greatest ability to work in the most unexploited locations, according to those who study the gold sector. Many illicit gold operations are being financed and operated directly by Chinese private investors who appear to be operating with little oversight or repercussion from Chinese authorities, investigators say. This has drawn allegations from gold-rich countries that Beijing is permitting the ransacking of gold deposits abroad, enabling a rapidly mutating trade that UN officials warn is propping up a range of other criminal activities. Makeshift tents at an illegal gold mine set up by Chinese investors in the village of Sekotong in Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Chinese officials have pushed back against these allegations, including the Chinese Ambassador to Ghana, Tong Defa, who in June said it was a 'significant injustice' to blame Beijing for the spread of illegal gold mining. The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters did not respond to detailed questions from the Post. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said it was 'not aware' of the allegations made by gold-rich countries about China's role and declined to comment. 'Chinese networks have become deeply involved in the illicit gold trade,' said David Soud, a minerals analyst who has written reports on gold for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 'Much of the gold they mine or otherwise acquire goes to China via highly opaque supply chains.' This is routinely done without the payment of local taxes or royalties, officials and analysts say. Illicit Chinese syndicates, according to Soud and other investigators, operate differently from both traditional, artisanal gold miners and industrial, legal mining companies, including those from China. A woman sifts through crushed ore for gold deposits on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post While artisanal miners use little to no machinery, illicit Chinese operators employ crushers, excavators and other tools to extract at a scale that rivals industrial mines. Unlike industrial mines, analysts say, the syndicates operate without regard to environmental, health and safety regulations, degrading forests and rivers at rates not seen before in many communities. In the sites where they operate, Chinese syndicates are also driving a transition from using mercury for processing to cyanide – a more effective but also more hazardous process when employed without strict controls, according to mining experts. 'This system has gotten much more complex and much more organised,' said Brad Brooks-Rubin, a former US State Department official who worked on mineral supply chains in the Biden Administration. 'The Western policy world has largely missed what has happened.' The operations of PT Amman Mineral International, a legal Indonesian-owned mine on western Sumbawa. Illicit mining is spreading on the eastern side of the island. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In a sign that the issue is just now emerging as a policy concern, the Trump Administration in March for the first time designated gold among the minerals vital to the US as part of an executive order to 'reduce our reliance on foreign nations'. In a hearing a few days later, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa, Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey), described China and its mining interests as the 'greatest beneficiaries' of the illicit gold trade. Beijing has rebuffed appeals from regulators in gold-rich countries to help crack down on Chinese-run mining syndicates and opted out of multilateral efforts to counter the underground trade, officials and advocates said in interviews. According to a Post review of government statements, court records and news reports, authorities in at least 15 gold-rich countries have brought cases against Chinese nationals and companies over illicit gold mining since the start of 2024. – In Ghana, Africa's top gold-exporting country, officials say Chinese syndicates have laid waste to swathes of Ghana's west and south, and are now moving to the country's north. 'The Chinese Government is doing nothing about it,' said Ghanaian lawmaker Tiah Abdul-Kabiru Mahama, calling the Chinese Communist Party 'complicit' in the destruction. Hundreds of Chinese nationals have been arrested just in recent months. Ghana has tried seeking the help of Chinese authorities, but to little avail, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah said in an interview. Miners who are deported are routinely able to find their way back into the country, Buah said, adding, 'It has been tough'. – In Indonesia, Asia's biggest gold producer after China, officials at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources say they receive reports almost daily of illegal gold mines across the country's sprawling archipelago, the biggest of which are linked to Chinese nationals, based on preliminary investigations. In one high-profile case last year, Indonesian authorities asked the Chinese Embassy to help identify its citizens and assist with the probe. 'They were not co-operative,' said an Indonesian official. The Chinese suspects fled Indonesia, the official added. - In French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America, Chinese investors form a 'crucial logistical chain' in an illicit gold market that the French military spends tens of millions of dollars annually to combat, said the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a defence think-tank funded in part by the French Government, in a 2023 report. 'The involvement of Chinese players,' FRS said, 'is part of a global context of resource capture and predation, encouraged or facilitated by the Chinese government.' Mystery holdings China has been among the world's biggest buyers of gold for over a decade, according to data from the World Gold Council, a trade association. But it's a mystery, analysts say, as to how much gold it actually has – and where it comes from. The Chinese Communist Party is heavily involved in acquiring gold for the state, whether through the People's Bank of China, brokers or via industrial policies that have encouraged retail buying and incentivised gold mining abroad, gold and financial analysts say. In 2017, Song Xin, then president of the China Gold Association, said the Belt and Road Initiative, China's US$1 trillion ($1.68t) global infrastructure programme, is 'also a golden road'. From 2000 to 2024, Chinese state-owned creditors inked 85 loan commitments for gold extraction and processing projects across the Global South, according to data provided to the Post by AidData, a research lab at William and Mary in Virginia. It's now easier for Chinese miners to find work outside China than at home, said Zeng Shanyue, a Chinese gold-mining investor based in Indonesia. Many of those going abroad originate from the southern province of Guangxi, which has a long tradition of mining. But businessmen from elsewhere in China, like his province of Zhejiang, are also moving in. 'Everyone,' Zeng said, 'is mining'. A ute carries gold ore for processing at an illegal gold mine in eastern Indonesia. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post To China's strategic thinkers, it is not enough. 'China's gold reserves are still insufficient and should be increased further,' said Liu Ping, a senior CCP official, in March at the annual meeting of China's top political advisory body. Gold is 'a crucial tool' for the country's national security, said Zhang Zhigang, another party official. While many countries are not fully transparent with their gold holdings, there are exceptionally large discrepancies between what Chinese authorities say they have and independent assessments from trade groups and banks. In a September 2024 research document, Goldman Sachs said its estimates of the Chinese central bank's gold purchases have been in certain months as much as 60 tonnes higher than the central bank declared. Over the course of 2024, said gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs at Money Metals, the People's Bank of China covertly bought 570 tonnes of gold, and it has now accumulated more than twice the gold it says it has. The scale of China's acquisitions is changing the gold market, Nieuwenhuijs told the Post. 'And the reason is that they really see the gold as an alternative to the dollar,' he said. The People's Bank of China did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, China's General Administration of Customs said it follows 'international conventions' on compiling and publishing information. 'China's gold import and export data is open and transparent,' it said. Given gold's strategic value, it's natural for China's holdings to be 'classified', said Zhao Qingming, an adjunct professor at the School of Finance of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. 'No country openly discloses whether its gold reserves are acquired domestically or internationally, or how much is sourced from each channel,' Zhao said. The problem, researchers say, is that this lack of transparency increasingly conceals large quantities of gold that was mined illegally. Martin, a local gold miner in the village of Taliwang on Sumbawa, said he has watched warily as Chinese mining operators spread in nearby communities. 'If they enter here, we can't compete,' he said. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Conservative estimates place the value of the illicit gold sector at more than US$30 billion or 400 tonnes a year. A study released in 2024 by the non-profit Swissaid found that gold smuggling out of Africa doubled between 2012 and 2022. Individually, unsanctioned mines may be smaller than legal ones. But aggregated over a country, over multiple countries – 'it's a massive, massive amount', said Pete Chirico, associate director of the US Geological Survey's Florence Bascom Geoscience Centre, which provides scientific assessments of resource extraction to the US government. Once smelted, illegal gold is virtually impossible to differentiate from legal gold – and equally as valuable to the world's biggest buyer. 'If you have a strategic interest in gold, you don't want to just rely on the industrial gold-mining sector,' Chirico said. 'You're trying to mop up gold wherever it is.' 'People's mining' Lalu Adimiyat, 40, looked out the window of a muddied Toyota SUV as it bumped along the pockmarked slopes of his village in eastern Indonesia. Stepping out into blustering winds, he caught the eye of a few local men peeking out from tented shafts. He nodded stiffly and turned away. It wasn't safe to stay long, he muttered. Chinese gold-mining investors began arriving here on Lombok island, an hour's boat ride from the holiday destination of Bali, in 2022, said Lalu, a community activist. In his village of Sekotong, locals had mined small amounts of gold for years, scaling the hills on motorbikes and using hand tools to scoop out gold-mottled ores that they sold to traders in the valleys. Indonesian workers move gold ore on the island of Sumbawa, where Chinese mining operators are becoming dominant. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Indonesian authorities allowed this as long as it remained small-scale, providing permits to citizens for what is called in Indonesian 'tambang rakyat', or 'people's mining'. When Chinese investors came, however, they came with excavators, crushers and pumps that stunned local miners, Lalu recalled. The Chinese built their own processing facilities at the top of hills, installing sprinkler systems to douse ore with cyanide – a chemical that local miners had never used before. They brought in towering Chinese-made mills with rollers that spun 160 times a minute. Soon, Chinese investors were moving quantities of gold in a single day that would take locals months or even years to extract, Lalu said. 'We felt defeated,' he recalled. After several clashes, hostilities boiled over in August 2024 when villagers set a dormitory for Chinese miners on fire. National authorities arrived to find one of the biggest illegal gold mines ever uncovered in Indonesia – an operation that spread across the size of 184 American football fields, producing gold with an estimated market value of US$5.5 million per month. 'I never expected that,' remembered Dian Patria, 58, who inspected the site in October. A plain-speaking, moustachioed bureaucrat in Indonesia's anti-corruption commission, Dian said he has watched Chinese illicit networks spread across Indonesia, corrupting offices from village councils to national ministries, amid a broader expansion in Chinese investment. In the country's far-flung eastern provinces, which he oversees and where mineral deposits are concentrated, the most coveted prize has been gold. 'They are robbing us,' Dian lamented from his office in Jakarta. 'Openly.' Indonesian officials say they are aware of dozens of large-scale illegal gold-mining operations on Sumbawa. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post In previous decades, when American companies such as Newmont dominated gold mining in Indonesia, authorities could rely partly on US and international anti-corruption regulations, such as the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, to stave off excessive graft. Not so with Chinese operators, who face few barriers to engaging in corruption abroad, Dian said. Indonesia has stepped up efforts to find and prosecute illegal mining syndicates, earlier this year opening a law enforcement arm within its minerals ministry and increasing enforcement against cyanide smuggling rings. The bribing of officials, however, means that even when regulators believe they have found damning evidence, their superiors may not be inclined to prosecute, Dian said. Indonesian authorities have reported major illicit gold operations run by Chinese networks in at least four provinces over the past year. None have led to convictions. In one case in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, authorities found a mine that stretched over 1.5km and employed as many as 80 people. Chinese nationals were brought to trial but then abruptly acquitted – a decision that the Indonesian Judicial Commission later said was marred by ethical breaches and misconduct by judges. In June, one of the Chinese defendants still in Indonesia was retried and given a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of US$1.8m. Haruki Agustina, director of climate change mitigation at the Indonesian Environment Ministry, said she thought the punishment was insufficient given the mine's damage to the environment, particularly with regard to the unregulated use of cyanide. 'Way, way too low,' she said in an interview. Villagers have long fished on Lake Lebo in Taliwang. Now, they say it is becoming contaminated with chemicals like mercury and cyanide from illegal gold mines. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post On Lombok, internal Indonesian government documents obtained by the Post say the illegal mine in Sekotong encroached into protected forest area, and operations were carried out by three companies – two led by Chinese nationals and one by Indonesians – none of which had the requisite permits. In addition, the documents say, there are dozens more illicit mines on Lombok and its neighbouring islands that the Government is aware of. The Sekotong investigation, which was handed over to police last year, has stalled, said a senior official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, adding that the reasons have not been shared with the ministry. The police did not respond to requests for comment. When Post reporters visited Sekotong in May, the police lines set up last year had been torn down. Trucks brimming with gold ore trundled along cliff edges, and the mines appeared operational. Lalu sucked his teeth as he raised his phone to take a video. 'No, no, no accountability,' he said. Beijing's 'plundering' In January, hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo demonstrated against what they called the 'plundering' of the country's gold by Chinese operators. Asked about the demonstrations, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said, 'The Chinese Government always asks Chinese citizens and companies overseas to strictly observe local laws and regulations.' Officials in gold-rich countries, however, say Beijing has done little to enforce that sentiment. Chinese authorities have been unco-operative in efforts to identify and deter Chinese nationals responsible for illicit gold mining, according to international investigators and officials in Ghana and Indonesia. Chinese authorities have also withheld data that could help quantify and track illicit gold flows, and are noticeably absent from multilateral discussions on the topic, researchers say. In May, for example, at the 2025 OECD conference on responsible mineral supply chains in Paris – widely seen as the most important annual forum on the topic – a small Chinese delegation spoke about industrial mining but did not participate in discussions on illicit flows, attendees said. In these conversations, 'China is the missing elephant in the room', said Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at the International Peace Information Service, a Belgium-based institute focused on mining in the African Great Lakes region. 'We talk about them,' he said. 'They are not there.' Futile resistance Indonesian villagers on Sumbawa have done artisanal mining for decades, using hand tools to extract and refine gold. Photo / Muhammad Fadli, The Washington Post Artisanal mining in the village of Lantung dates back decades, locals say. But large-scale mining only began three years ago, when a middle-aged Chinese man known to villagers as 'Mr Xi' began striking deals with smallholders to dig on their land. He promised compensation that did not materialise, villagers said. But attempts to protest have had little effect. Runoff from the gaping pits on the mountaintops is killing crops. Every week, it seems, cattle downstream of the mine's cyanide pools drop dead, locals say. 'Everything you see here, that hill and that hill and that one. … Everything you see that is stripped land is the Chinese,' said Sabuddin, a local villager. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt that hung loose on his scrawny frame, Sabuddin, 49, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, stood perched on a jagged bluff. He said he did 'rakyat' mining, working with a hammer and pickax. He dug sometimes in areas like this one, which Chinese operators had excavated and then abandoned, Sabuddin said. But he had never mined for the Chinese. 'They work illegally,' he explained. 'I don't want to be involved in all that.' Yet, looking across the jungles he'd trekked through as a boy, he sometimes felt a sense of awe at the scale of the Chinese operation, he said. He pointed out a building with zinc roofs on the opposing crag – a dormitory for workers who guard the illicit mine. Even when night falls, the lights in those buildings don't turn off, he said. The crushers keep whirring; the excavators keep inching forward. Locals couldn't run an operation like this, Sabuddin said. 'No,' he continued. 'Only the Chinese.'


Scoop
20-07-2025
- Scoop
As War Rages On In Ukraine, Organised Crime Is Taking New Forms
Since February 2022, both legal and illegal economies in Ukraine have been severely disrupted by the war. The report examines the evolution of organised crime structures in the country and focuses on six distinct areas: drug trafficking and production, online scams and fraud, arms trafficking, economic crime, trafficking in persons, and the facilitation of illegal exit and draft evasion. 'The war has not only inflicted untold suffering on the Ukrainian people, but has also triggered a marked evolution in organised crime – which can have profound implications for the country's journey towards recovery and reconstruction,' said Angela Me, Chief of Research and Analysis at UNODC. Drug trafficking While the trafficking of cocaine and heroin through Ukraine has decreased drastically since 2022, the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs such as cathinones and methadone have increased. The expansion of cathinone trafficking in recent years has been facilitated by the darknet, notably through market platforms such as Hydra, which was dismantled in April 2022. Regarding methadone, the report noted that most of the Ukrainian production is trafficked within the country and not abroad, as domestic demand for the drug is on the rise. Arms trafficking The war has also increased the availability of weapons in the country, notably due to a massive influx of arms from the battlefield. This surplus is resulting in a rise in arms seizures and violence among civilians, marked notably by an increase in domestic and intimate partner violence. Although there is no evidence to suggest large-scale arms trafficking outside Ukraine, UNODC highlighted the importance of monitoring the situation in light of the sheer number of weapons available and the historic regional presence of criminal actors specialising in arms trafficking. While there is, as of now, no evidence of drones being used in a non-military context, civilian drones and 3D-printed components for frontline attacks could fuel new illicit markets, the report found. Trafficking in persons As roughly 14 million people have been displaced by the war, some criminal groups have exploited these populations by luring them into shelters or accommodations disguised as humanitarian assistance providers, where they are subjected to forced labour. While intensified patrolling of the borders, paired with the near-complete closure of the eastern and north-eastern borders, has limited the smuggling of migrants through Ukraine, traffickers have instead turned to facilitating draft evasion by Ukrainian men. 'Curtailing organised crime is a key requirement for achieving sustainable peace, justice, national security and the protection of human rights,' said Matthias Schmale, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, as the global body stands ready to support the country in this critical work.


Newsroom
15-07-2025
- Newsroom
Stemming the drug tide at Auckland Airport
The trickle of drugs into the country has become a flood, fed by New Zealanders' appetite for them and willingness to pay. Between January and May this year customs officers nationwide seized more than 1600kg of methamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA. About a third of that comes through Auckland Airport – from January 1 until now it's seized 542kg of methamphetamine and cocaine. Today on The Detail we head out to the business end of customs to get the inside view. Customs manager Paul Williams says they're dealing with an increasing number of smuggling attempts, and some of the culprits don't even try to hide it. 'The biggest shift that we've seen is no concealment whatsoever. So we're seeing criminal groups using couriers and you open up the bag and the drugs are sitting there,' he says. Williams puts the change down to criminals becoming more confident. 'It's a confidence they have, with respect to what they're doing and I expect like any business they perhaps operate at a level of understanding of what type of wastage or what type of level of drugs they may lose with respects to their efforts,' he says. Customs manager at Auckland Airport, Paul Williams. Photo: Supplied When Williams started out in the sector a little over two decades ago, drug trafficking was an occasional event, and when it happened the substances were meticulously concealed. But nowadays drugs are found in mail or cargo every day. On just one flight there was a haul of 101kg. Tracking and uncovering the drugs involves casting a broad net. 'It's not just an officer in a booth, we may have a dog operating … we work really closely with international partners around trends, observations, their own experiences and that helps us look at people in advance through the data the airlines have,' Williams says. A large amount of the illicit drug market comes out of parts of South America and Asia, but Williams says that doesn't mean they focus only on people and luggage from those places. 'The key thing to remember is that for New Zealand, we receive multiple flights and multiple vessels from a host of different trade routes and passenger routes … and so criminal groups will always look to try to hide where things are coming from,' he says. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says organised criminal networks are driving the illicit drug trade, with devastating consequences for people and communities around the world. It says stopping drug trafficking requires long-term coordinated action to address supply and demand, and to prevent organised criminal groups from exploiting vulnerabilities. Williams says there's significant investment in offshore operations because the best-case scenario is catching the drugs before they get here. 'It's a real win for New Zealand because, just purely from a fiscal perspective, you don't have a court process, you don't have that lead-in time to the court process, you don't have drugs that you have to store and then eventually dispose of. 'You don't run the risk of those drugs actually entering society and having all the actual harm that comes from the consumption from those drugs,' he says. Williams says the nature of drug trafficking has changed a lot over the years, so reflecting and learning from past cases is essential. 'We've done a lot in the export space … to help and protect the primary exporters of New Zealand, helping them secure their supply chain a bit more and then they get trade-offs through the Authorised Economic Operator programme … faster access to market essentially. 'We work really closely with DHL, FedEx, a host of other facilitators of imported goods and we look to educate them on what it is that we see at the border and we talk to them about exploitation, we talk to them about vulnerabilities within the supply chain. 'The more that they understand how the supply chain works and where the vulnerabilities are the more they are attuned to what's going on and that then results in them talking to us and they can often come to us and say 'We think we've got an issue here,' and we will go in and we'll help them.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.