Cattle rustling in Kenya's North Rift has evolved from a small-scale cultural tradition into an organised, heavily armed, and highly profitable criminal enterprise. Raids can involve hundreds of people, strip families of generational wealth, and displace entire communities. And it's no longer driven by cattle alone, but by a wider scramble for territory, political power, and access to oil, gold, and other resources. In this episode of The Index, we examine who profits from this criminal economy and why efforts to stop it have failed.

To learn more about organized crime in Kenya, visit: ocindex.net

How does a car stolen from a driveway in the UK or Europe make its way to a different continent, and end up for sale thousands of miles away?

There is no single route, or criminal organization controlling this trade. Instead it relies on a network of specialist, and the involvement of private-sector actors who either knowingly cooperate, or may be coerced.

Between 2023 and 2025, the Global Organized Crime Index recorded an increase in the influence in the influence of private-sector actors - the steepest rise among all the criminal actor types monitored.

We examine how vehicles are moved into overseas markets, the actors who enable the trade, and why it remains so difficult to stop.

Every year, the counterfeit pharmaceutical market generates up to $400 billion — dwarfing the global street drug trade. But the danger isn't just financial. Fake medicines may contain no active ingredients, toxic contaminants, or unregulated chemicals — and most people have no idea they're taking them.

In this episode of The Index, we speak with Oksana Pyzik, Associate Professor at UCL School of Pharmacy and founder of its Fight the Fakes Collaborating Centre, about the growing threat of counterfeit pharmaceuticals: who's buying them, who's producing them, and why criminal networks are increasingly choosing fake medicines over street drugs.