Transnational crime is also facilitated by economic globalization:

1. Passenger volume on international commercial flights soared from 26 billion passenger miles in 1960 to 152 billion in 1974 and to more than 600 billion in 1992.
   
2. Global imports rose from $330 billion in 1960 to $2,050 billion in 1980 and $3,500 billion in 1990; completion of the Uruguay Round of trade talks and the proliferation of free-trade agreements are likely to spur an even larger transnational flow of goods and services.
   
3. Major currencies -- primarily the dollar, and secondarily the deutschemark and yen -- are nearly universally exchangeable, smoothing the transition from illicit profit in one part of the world to apparently legitimate investment elsewhere.
   
4. Trillions of dollars are exchanged through electronic transfers every day; in one New York-based bank network alone, $2 billion races through digital channels each minute. Furthermore, an expert estimates that "perhaps half of the industrialized world's stock of money resides in or passes through tax havens".**
   
5. Increasing migration, combined with a general resurgence of ethnic loyalties and the hostility and economic hardship which migrants often face in new homelands, creates fertile grounds for cohesive, hard-to-penetrate crime networks spanning many borders.
   
6. Syndicates also take advantage of centuries-old obstacles to international law enforcement cooperation: language and cultural differences, variations in crime codes and criminal justice practices, the desire to protect national sovereignty, and reluctance to share scarce resources or share credit for successes.