The claim: Ukraine is the money laundering and child sex trafficking “capital of the world”
An information war about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is continuing online even as troops clash on the ground, with bots spreading disinformation and Russian state media seeking to divide Western viewers.
A viral Facebook post from April 2 claims Ukraine is the money laundering and child sex trafficking “capital of the world.” The post accumulated more than 1,000 interactions in less than a week.
But experts don’t rank Ukraine as the worst in either human trafficking or money laundering.
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USA TODAY reached out to the user who posted the claim for comment.
Ukraine isn’t the worst when it comes to human trafficking
Though several organizations track data about human trafficking, there is no exact country-by-country index for child sex trafficking in particular, according to Kristen Leanderson Abrams, senior director of combatting human trafficking at the McCain Institute.
A 2015 report by the International Labour Organization stated that in 2002, an estimated 6 million children were enslaved worldwide, with 1.2 million trafficked and 1.8 million sexually exploited. In 2016, an estimated 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery, with women and girls accounting for an estimated 99% of the victims of illegal sexual exploitation.
“Modern slavery” and “human trafficking” are both used as umbrella terms to describe forced labor and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. Department of State.
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Abrams noted that, for human trafficking in general, the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report is the “gold standard.”
The report divides countries into four categories depending on each country’s efforts to fight human trafficking, using criteria from the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Tier 1 indicates that a country fully complies with the minimum standards of the protection act, while Tier 2 means that while a country is not fully compliant, it is making “significant efforts” to reach full compliance. Tier 3 indicates that a country’s government does not comply with standards and is not making efforts to do so.
The most recent report, from 2021, places Ukraine in Tier 2, along with countries such as Denmark, Germany and Japan. The United States is a Tier 1 country, alongside places like the United Kingdom and Canada. In contrast, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan are all classified as Tier 3.
Abrams also pointed out work by anti-trafficking advocacy groups Walk Free, the International Labour Organization and the International Organization for Migration. While the groups create multiple reports on modern slavery, their Global Slavery Index looks at modern slavery data on a country-by-country basis.
In the most recent index report from 2018, governments are rated on a scale from A to D, with intermediate rankings like BBB and CCC, depending on their response to modern slavery within their borders. The Netherlands is the only country with an “A” rating, while the U.S. scored the next highest “BBB” rating. Ukraine is classified as “BB”, while countries such as North Korea and Libya scored a “D.”
The numbers change slightly in other parts of the report. In the section that breaks down modern slavery in Europe and Central Asia, Ukraine ranks #7 out of 50 countries in modern slavery prevalence, with 6.4 victims per 1,000 people.
But no matter the metric used, Ukraine doesn’t rank No. 1.
The Russian invasion may serve to worsen child trafficking in the region, according to a March 19 UNICEF release. Traffickers have been known to take advantage of chaos and large-scale population movement, and UNICEF also called attention to the significant number of unaccompanied children fleeing Ukraine.
Money laundering “capital” difficult to pinpoint
While various indices exist for human trafficking, ranking countries by prevalence of money laundering is a much trickier endeavor. But there’s no evidence Ukraine plays a leading role.
The Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index is an annual ranking of money laundering and terrorist funding risk on a country-by-country basis. Run by the Swiss-based independent Basel Institute on Governance, the Basel AML Index uses data taken from places such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum.
Ukraine falls in the middle of the rankings with a score of 5.21, whereas Haiti takes the riskiest spot at 8.49 and Andorra takes the safest spot at 2.79. (The U.S. has a score of 4.60.)
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Still, there is no way to determine the “money laundering capital of the world,” because money laundering is a risk across the global financial system, according to Lakshmi Kumar, policy director at Global Financial Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
No country is free of money laundering, Kumar said, and depending on several factors – size of the economy, strength of the judicial system, type of government – the risk of money laundering can rise or fall dramatically. At the moment, she said, the top-ranked Haiti is “politically chaotic,” which heightens the risk of money laundering.
But the size of Haiti’s economy casts doubt on the importance of a country’s index ranking.
For example, the U.S. has a much bigger impact on the global financial system due to the size of its economy, so money laundering in the U.S. “means more,” Kumar said.
Kumar also explained how money laundering between countries also complicates analysis.
“Most of the world’s illicit money leaves the developing world, but it finds a place in the developed world,” Kumar said. “If you isolated and just see this as a problem of Ukraine or Russia, then you ignore the role that US, Europe, the UK, Canada, all play in helping hide this money.”
In the end, Kumar said, looking at the cross-border nature of money laundering is crucial to studying the activity.
Our rating: False
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Ukraine is the money laundering and child sex trafficking “capital of the world.” There’s no evidence Ukraine is uniquely problematic in either category. While the actual “capitals of the world” on these issues are difficult to pinpoint, various reports, indices and experts indicate that while trafficking and money laundering do occur within Ukraine’s borders these problems are more prevalent in many other countries.
Our fact-check sources:
- USA TODAY, March 30, Fact check: Putin’s claims justifying war in Ukraine are baseless, experts say
- Associated Press, Feb. 26, TikTok is Russia’s newest weapon in arsenal for anti-Ukraine propaganda
- Kristen Leanderson Abrams, April 4, Phone interview with USA TODAY
- International Labour Organization, 2015, Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking of Children “in a nutshell”
- International Labour Organization, accessed April 6, Forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking
- U.S. Department of State, accessed April 6, What is Modern Slavery?
- U.S. Department of State, January 7, 2021, Report to Congress on 2021 Trafficking in Persons Interim Assessment Pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act
- U.S. Department of State, accessed April 6, 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report
- Walk Free Foundation, accessed April 6, The Index
- Walk Free Foundation, accessed April 6, The Global Slavery Index 2018
- UNICEF, March 19, Children fleeing war in Ukraine at heightened risk of trafficking and exploitation
- Basel Institute on Governance, accessed April 6, Basel AML Index 2021
- Basel Institute on Governance, accessed April 6, Global Ranking in 2021
- Lakshmi Kumar, April 4, Phone interview with USA TODAY
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