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Title 3— The President
Executive Order 14060 of December 15, 2021
Establishing the United States Council on Transnational Organized Crime
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. Transnational organized crime (TOC) poses a direct and escalating threat to public health, public safety, and national security. Transnational criminal organizations engage in a broad range of criminal activities, including drug and weapons trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, cybercrime, intellectual property theft, money laundering, wildlife and timber trafficking, illegal fishing, and illegal mining.
These networks continue to expand in size and influence in the United States and abroad. Transnational criminal organizations contribute directly to tens of thousands of drug-overdose deaths in the United States each year and adversely affect American communities and economic prosperity. They also threaten United States national security by degrading the security and stability of allied and partner nations, undermining the rule of law, fostering corruption, acting as proxies for hostile state activities, directly or indirectly funding insurgent and terrorist groups, depleting natural resources, harming human health and the environment, contributing to climate change through illegal deforestation and logging, and exploiting and endangering vulnerable populations. In some regions, transnational criminal organizations wield state-like capabilities, disregarding sovereign borders, compromising the integrity of democratic institutions and threatening the legitimacy of fragile governments, and securing their power through intimidation, corruption, and violence. For these reasons, it is in the national interest of the United States to counter TOC. Addressing TOC requires a coordinated Federal framework accompanied by a cohesive whole-of-government effort executed in collaboration with State, local, Tribal, territorial, and civil society partners in the United States and in close coordination with foreign partners, international and regional organizations, and international and local civil society groups abroad.
Sec. 2. Policy. Executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall take actions within their respective authorities, including, as appropriate, through the provision of technical and financial assistance, to enhance efforts to counter TOC. It is the policy of the United States to:
- (a) employ authorized intelligence and operational capabilities in an integrated manner to target, disrupt, and degrade transnational criminal organizations that pose the greatest threat to national security;
- (b) collaborate with private entities and international, multilateral, and bilateral organizations to combat TOC, while also strengthening cooperation with and advancing efforts to build capacity in partner nations to reduce transnational criminal activity;
- (c) improve information sharing between law enforcement entities and the Intelligence Community to enhance strategic analysis of, and efforts to combat, transnational criminal organizations and their activities, while also preserving our ability to speedily bring TOC actors to justice;
- (d) expand tools and capabilities to combat illicit finance, which underpins all TOC activities; and
