SEPTEMBER 18 — Dusky leaf monkeys and the elusive sun bear prowl the tropical forests of South-east Asia. But the dangers of Mother Nature are not all they have to look out for — they are also coveted prey for a more insidious threat.

Between 2020 and 2023, Malaysia’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks recorded 654 cases of the illegal sale of exotic wildlife. The sprawling trade network, propped up by syndicates, hunters and opportunistic sellers, predominantly thrives online.

Demand is high, and fuelled by a range of dubious motives. Sun bears, for instance, are hunted for their bile, which is commonly used in certain types of traditional medicine.

Others simply want an exotic pet to flaunt. In Singapore, instant messaging service Telegram is a teeming (underground) marketplace for live animals, among other illegal activities on the platform for which its founder, Pavel Durov, is being investigated.

It’s an Asean-wide problem. The region is estimated to account for one quarter of the global illegal wildlife trade. But the troubling reality is that it’s much more than that. All sorts of illicit trade, from tobacco to counterfeit products, is rampant in Asean and negatively impacting countries’ key economic sectors.

Worse, much of this black market activity continues to happen on borderless online platforms — both e-commerce and instant message services alike —which are being abused by criminals to sell and distribute illegal products across the region.

Effectively combating this growing, dynamic threat naturally demands concerted efforts across governments and the private and not-for-profit sectors. But the Asean philosophy of cooperation alone is not enough. These partnerships and dialogues must also be backed by robust legislation to give authorities the extra edge against criminals and take tangible action against them.

The tech trade-off

Technology is supercharging the illicit trade ecosystem. While established e-commerce platforms provide a seemingly legitimate venue for the sale of illegal goods, instant messaging services often offer end-to-end encryption, facilitating discreet and secure exchanges between buyers and sellers.

LINE, for example, is Thailand’s most popular communications app, but beyond its famously adorable stickers and user-friendly interface, it is also a hub for less savoury activities.

Just earlier this year, a man in his early 20s was arrested for selling vapes via a LINE chat room, whose name was changed frequently to avoid police detection. Indeed, despite the total ban on e-cigarettes in Thailand, they continue to be easily available in both online and physical stores.

In Indonesia, major pharmaceutical counterfeiting networks selling fake anti-cancer treatments or weight loss drugs conduct a significant portion of their trade online too, according to research by the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade. This situation has widespread societal implications: it poses serious health risks to consumers, harms the market for genuine medicines and strains public health budgets.

What’s more, sales can be conducted online with relative anonymity, and the sheer number of transactions that happen on a daily basis may easily evade regulatory oversight.

Cooperation meets compliance

Evidently, online crime is not an issue that can be tackled alone. On one hand, multilateral cooperation in the region needs to be stepped up. And this cannot just be on a government to government level — the private and non-profit sectors must also be brought in.

In general, the world is still operating on an outdated paradigm of old crime, which focuses heavily on the location a crime was committed and the corresponding legal mechanisms within that specific jurisdiction. But how do you deal with organisations like Facebook or LINE which have no physical presence in your country?

The International Criminal Police Organization, more commonly known as Interpol, exemplifies the kind of cross-government and cross-sector cooperation we need to fight today’s crime. The world’s largest inter-governmental police organisation just recently extended its partnership with leading cybersecurity company Global-IB, reinforcing their joint commitment to fight cybercrime on a global scale.

But more importantly, these partnerships need to be backed up by effective legislation. This is essential to ensure that collaborative efforts are not merely symbolic, and that authorities have the legal power to hold criminal entities accountable and enforce compliance.

In Singapore, two codes of practice for both online communication and e-commerce services have already been issued under its newly enacted Online Criminal Harms Act, which specifically tackles evolving criminal content online.

Among other stipulations, it requires sellers on Carousell and Facebook to verify their identity by the first quarter of 2025 if the number of reported scams on these platforms fails to drop significantly.

Philippines’s Department of Trade and Industry also issued Administrative Order 24-03 in July, requiring the immediate suspension of vape sales on all e-marketplaces. These include Lazada, Shopee and Facebook Marketplace, where listings of prohibited items continue to be listed despite repeated requests by the government to remove them. The order will only be lifted if online merchants have ensured full compliance with proof-of-age verification and other relevant laws and regulations, such as the Vaporised Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Act.

Even if the immediate effects are uncertain, legislation is essential in setting a framework for accountability and compliance, holding online platforms criminally liable for facilitating illegal activities, whether knowingly or not.

We might not personally care about things like the use of e-cigarettes or tobacco on a person-to-person basis, yet it is not so much the type of crime itself that matters, but the collective will to dismantle the sinister world of online crime.

* Shane Britten is the CEO of Crime Stoppers International, a global non-profit organisation that educates communities about transnational crime and works closely with law enforcement agencies around the world to fight it.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.