Indeed many actors are participating to criminal activities such as local or regional organizations as well as isolated, moving and independent individuals. Global and recent trends such as growing interdependence and openenness coexisting with increasing poverty and inequities between and within states have fundamentaly changed the context in which criminal organizations operate and encouraged domestic groups to develop into transnational criminal organizations. Thus prompting states to recognize that the problem can no longer be treated as something that falls within a single jurisdiction. The fact that different parts of the world are rapidly becoming more accessible and interdependent due to the dissolutuion of traditional trade and political barriers, the acceleration of migrations and immigrations, the emergence of free trade areas in Europe and in America or the information revolution is cetainly creating favourable circumstances for illegal activities. Global financial markets are offering open circuits to launder drug money and allow criminal organizations to invest in legitimate parts of the economy.
Many authors compare transnational crime organizations to licit ones.
As they both intend to make profit. As well as legal multinational firms, TCO's have global strategies and nurture alliances in order to neutralize competition, to facilitate the access to new markets and to share risks. During the late 1980's the Colombians took advantage of their linlkages with the Sicilians to penetrate the cocaine market in Europe. If criminal activities are thriving in an interdependent world, growing divisions, contrasts and fragmentations are also paving the way to illegal activities. International social and economic inequities between rich and poor countries and within industrialized one are corrolaries of globalization that also favour crime.