7 Biggest Illegal Businesses Across The Globe

Bangalore: This is an open secret that illegal businesses are big businesses. One of these most rated illegal businesses is the drug businesses which almost account for $600 billion in annual profit and approximately 70 percent of the revenue of all criminal associations across the globe. There are several 600 billion cigarettes smuggled globally every year, a $30 billion illegitimate industry, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, reports Forbes.

Though other country governments as well as the Indian government are taking strict actions against these illegal practices, the businesses of these sectors are still on fire. Read on to know eight biggest illegal businesses in the world, listed by The Economist.

1. Drug trafficking
Global Revenue in 2012: $320 billion
Overall Rank In Revenue: 1

The illegitimate drug buying and selling is a worldwide black market, fanatical to cultivation, developed, distributed, and traded, which are subject to drug prevention laws. Most authorities forbid drug trade, apart from licensed dealers.

“The global drug trade generated an estimated $321.6 billion in 2003", said an UN report. Due to its illegitimate character, figures about earnings from the drug trade are mostly unidentified. An online report published by the UK Home Office in 2007 estimated the illicit drug market in the UK at £4 to £6.6 billion a year.

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