Illegal economies exist around everything from narcotics to tobacco, but amongst the most troubling illegal trades is that in wildlife parts which causes untold ecological damage and has pushed many species to the point of extinction.

Take a deep dive into how undercover investigators helped law enforcement to bring down one of the top players in Vietnam's wildlife trafficking underworld.

(Photo: Wildlife Justice Commission)

Vietnamese authorities should immediately release journalist Dung Le Van and drop any charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Monday after police arrested the freelance reporter who covers corruption and land confiscations in his country.

An estimated 8,000 tigers still inhabit semi-legal tiger farms in China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, where they are displayed to visitors, fattened up for meat and then slaughtered for their skins, bones and body parts, according to an academic article published on Wednesday.

The United Kingdom has convicted a further four people of involvement in a human smuggling operation that resulted in the deaths of dozens of Vietnamese migrants last year, theCrown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced on Monday.

A Texas federal court convicted a woman for running a criminal organization that charged immigrants tens of thousands to help them marry U.S. citizens and circumvent U.S. immigration procedures, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday. 

A group that rescues women and girls trafficked from Vietnam to China says the closure of the border due to COVID-19 has hindered efforts to help victims escape slavery and sexual exploitation.

German police arrested six suspected members of a gang that made significant profits from trafficking people from Vietnam to Germany and making them work in nail parlors and sweatshops to pay off their debts.

Vietnamese authorities accused a former information minister and his successor of taking more than US$3 million in bribes in exchange for signing and implementing a suspicious contract with state-owned telecom, MobiFone, local media reported on Tuesday. 

A Chinese court sentenced a human rights activist to 12 years in prison for leaking state secrets while a Vietnamese court locked seven activists behind bars saying they “caused public disorder.”

Authorities at the Hanoi International Airport discovered 125 kg of rhino horns encased in plaster being smuggled through the airport, the state-sponsored Vietnam News Agency reported Saturday.

Transnational crime groups in Southeast Asia are growing increasingly aggressive and illicit businesses are generating massive growths in profit though the trafficking of drugs, people, counterfeit goods and other commodities, outlines a new United Nations report published Thursday.

Malaysian authorities have detained 123 Vietnamese fishermen in the first half of May in a campaign that Vietnamese press called Malaysia’s toughest move yet to curb illegal fishing.

Vietnamese customs has seized over nine tonnes of ivory found in a container shipment from the Republic of Congo, thought to be the largest ivory seizure in recorded history.

Six years after a Global Witness investigation revealed the illegal logging and massive land grabs behind Southeast Asia’s rubber industry, car companies and tire manufacturers around the world came together to take action on the environmental and human rights abuses involved in their business.

European officials have discovered illegal tiger farms operating in the Czech Republic and experts suspect other countries also house such facilities, thousands of miles away from where they had previously only thought they existed, the Guardian reported Monday.

Interpol called on Wednesday for more global cooperation in stemming theft, forgery, and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage after a symposium in Hanoi with Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security.

A group of Cambodian civil society organizations has petitioned the European Union to reconsider signing an agreement on timber trade with Vietnam, saying that the country has not done enough to stop the flow of illegally-cut Cambodian wood across its borders.

A Vietnamese court is expected to set precedent on Tuesday by determining who will bear financial responsibility in a record-setting fraud trial, Reuters reported Monday.

Vietnam sentenced the former general director of one of the country’s major banks to death on Friday following a lengthy trial of 51 officials and bankers involved in misappropriating US$ 69 million, according to Reuters.