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The bottom line
Learning how to start a trucking company can sound complicated. In reality, it’s not dissimilar to the steps involved in starting a small business of any other stripe. Your equipment costs may be a bit higher, and the hunt for talent a bit more competitive, but the underlying principles involved in starting a trucking business are still the same. With the right business plan, licensure, and financing in place, you too can get the wheels rolling on your trucking business.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/how-to-start-a-trucking-company

Commercial truck financing
If you don’t qualify for an SBA loan, equipment financing loans are a great alternative and also offer borrower-friendly repayment terms. Under this umbrella, you’ll also find commercial truck financing for buying or leasing new or used trucks or repairing or upgrading a truck you already own.

The way this type of loan works is you will approach the lender with a quote for exactly how much your equipment (in this case, most likely a truck) will cost. If approved, the lender then provides you with the appropriate sum of money, which you’ll repay (plus interest) over a fixed amount of time.

Keep in mind that the truck serves as collateral, should you fail to repay your loans. Because of this “safety net,” lenders are more likely to approve you for commercial truck financing.

Small business term loans
Another option to help start your trucking company is a business term loan. A lender provides a certain sum of money to the borrower to be repaid during a set amount of time. The interest rate associated with the loan may stay fixed throughout its duration or may vary based on economic factors.

While short-term business loans are easier to get than SBA loans—chiefly because they have lower credit requirements and easier applications—they typically hold higher interest rates, lower loan tallies, and must be repaid much more quickly.

4 reasons to start a trucking company
Here are the top four reasons why learning how to start a trucking company could be your next business venture:

1. There’s a major shortage of drivers
The trucking industry is forecasted to need 100,000 drivers in the near future, and companies are desperate to find drivers to fill the void. When you want to figure out how to start a trucking company, this will likely provide you with a tactical advantage, considering that you’ll be helping to fill a need for more trucks and drivers.

2. There’s a need for innovation in the industry
Nearly any industry welcomes innovation—including the trucking industry. Increasing efficiency within your fleet and establishing less fuel-intensive routes and logistics helps you improve your value to your customers. This gives you a competitive advantage, positioning your business for long-term success.

3. It's recession-proof
Trucking is the backbone of the country’s economy. As a trucking business owner, you’ll play a pivotal role in getting goods to stores and warehouses. Also, the trucking industry is largely recession-resistant—there is always a need for trucking companies to obtain products and materials across the country.

4. It’s easy to start small (and scale)
You won’t have to invest as much into your trucking company before it turns a profit, and you can better expand your business as demand—and your profit margin—grows. Eventually, you can learn how to start a trucking company without driving by hiring additional employees and drivers.

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Buy vs. lease
This buy vs. lease debate depends on your buying power as a small business owner. And there are several advantages and disadvantages that accommodate each route. When you buy a truck outright, your payment is completed—no need to make monthly payments. You can also use the built-in equity to trade in your truck in the future. Of course, this also means a larger down payment—usually 10% to 25%—depending on whether you buy new or used.

When you lease, you don’t own your truck. You must make regular payments and cannot use the equity to buy a new truck. Also, you must abide by specific regulations, including maintaining its condition and mileage restrictions. But leasing offers some advantages—mainly, the lessor will often cover your maintenance expenses.

Whether you choose to buy outright or lease, you will still likely need to find some way to finance your purchase.

Step 5: Secure startup funding
As we mentioned above, buying a commercial truck is no small expense. Thus, you'll likely need to secure startup funding to get your trucking business off the ground. Besides the below funding options, also consider opening a business bank account and credit card.

How much does it cost to start a trucking company?

Trucking can be lucrative, no doubt. It’s also guaranteed to require a fair amount of business capital to start a trucking company—a commercial truck costs around $80,000, after all. Then, of course, there’s the capital that goes into keeping your fleet operating at peak performance. In addition to purchasing your truck, you’ll also want to factor into your business budget:

Registration and documentations
Business permits and licenses
Truck maintenance fees
Trucking accounting software

These expenses can tally up. According to the Small Business Administration, trucking and transport companies took out an average loan of $106,000. So, if you want to learn how to start a trucking company with no money, you won’t get very far. You will likely need to seek additional funding to make your business plan a reality.

The good news is that there are a ton of business loan options available to trucking businesses:

SBA loans
You’ll find that SBA loans are increasingly popular due to their low interest rates, high loan totals, and generous repayment terms. Moreover, the SBA guarantees up to 85% of the loan’s total if the borrower can’t make repayments.

These loans are great to kickstart your trucking company but are notoriously hard to get. You need a long and established credit history, a good credit score, and a high tolerance for paperwork. If you think you can make the cut, check this full list of SBA loan types.

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Step 3: Obtain business licenses, permits, and insurance
Next, make sure your trucking company is operating legally. To do so, you'll want to look into business licenses, permits, and insurance.

Business licenses and permits
Trucking companies face unique challenges and liabilities, which makes it crucial that you line up all the required licenses and insurance policies as required by your state of operation.

Most, if not all, states will require you to get a business license if you intend to headquarter your business within its boundaries. You’ll need to get these policies and licenses set up before your first shipment hits the road.

Another license you must secure is an International Registration Plan. This is required if your truck is 26,000 pounds and crossing state lines. This allows you to operate your truck in all states and some Canadian provinces.

As regulations vary by state, consult with your state’s guidelines to find out exactly what you need to stay on the right side of local regulations.

Business insurance
Some types of business insurance you’ll likely need to obtain include public liability insurance, cargo insurance, bobtail, and physical damage insurance. If you’re unsure about whether you're fully compliant with your business requirements, it’s always a good idea to consult with a startup lawyer that's worked with other trucking companies. Their expertise ensures you're taking all the legally required steps before starting your trucking business.

Step 4: Choose the right truck
Your commercial truck will be one of your most significant investments when learning how to start a trucking company—it’s essential that you choose the right one for your business. When selecting your truck, you’ll want to consider some of the factors:

Price
Comfort level
Your preferred cab style
Weather resistance
Whether they have multiple dealerships across the U.S.
Weight limit
New vs. used
Whether you’re operating locally or long distances

As with any vehicle you purchase, you should do a test drive. But if you want to narrow down your brands, you’ll find that Kenworth, Freightliner, and Peterbilt trucks can accommodate most of your trucking needs:

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Just over 70% of all U.S. freight moves through trucks, which means that there’s always a demand for trucks—and, more importantly, trucking companies.

If you want to know how to start a trucking company, there are plenty of factors to consider, including hiring employees, choosing your business entity, and securing financing.

We’ll break down what you need to know about how to start a trucking company from start to finish and help you make the right decisions to get your trucking business in high gear.

Step 1: Write a business plan
It might not seem like you’d need to write a business plan for a trucking company, given that the underlying operating premises are somewhat straightforward. Writing a business plan, however, helps you focus on the core parts of your company. A good business plan lays out the reason for your company’s founding, the capital required to get started, financial projections that display costs versus anticipated profits, and other strategy details.

Writing a trucking company business plan keeps you focused on building your company according to a blueprint, which is especially helpful as you get into the dirty work of getting started and may not have time to refocus on your overarching strategy. Just as importantly, you’ll also need a business plan as part of just about any small business loan application. You’ll be glad you created a plan before you start applying for funding, as the process will be smoother. To help you get started, check out our free business plan template.

Step 2: Register your business
Once you’ve written a rock-solid business plan, the next step you’ll want to take to start a trucking company is to register your business with any local or state governments that require it.

Choose a business entity

You’ll want to take a look at the different kinds of business entities available to you before submitting your paperwork. Each business entity offers various personal liability protections, taxation methods, ownership structures, and other technical differences. If you’re starting a one-person, self-owned trucking company, look into limited liability companies (LLC) to protect your personal assets. If you’re establishing your company with a business partner, you will also want to consider the different kinds of LLCs designed for partnerships (limited liability partnership) and corporations. There are other business entities out there as well worth considering, but it’s best to start with these two categories and determine from there whether or not you need to go with something different.

The process of incorporating your business is relatively straightforward, even if it’s a little paperwork-heavy. Typically all it takes is some supporting documentation about the company’s principals and founders, tax identification information, a general business agreement, and a few other materials about your soon-to-be company (which largely differ depending on the state you’re registering in).

Choose a business name

Alongside registering your business, be sure to choose a unique business name. Your business name will the first impression for potential clients, so make sure it communicates your brand, specialty, and personality.

Also, be sure that your business name is not taken. Once you have a boil down your options to a few names, do a quick secretary of state and U.S. Patent and Trademark search to ensure the name you're considering are available for use.

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"Phones will be offloaded to known fences within a couple of hours," he said.

"It's always a battle against the clock immediately following any of these crimes, but people should always report these things to the police, because if we don't know that these crimes are taking place, we can't investigate them." And sometimes just one arrest can make a difference.

"When we do catch these criminals, either in the act or after the fact, our crime rates tank," he said. "Quite often that individual has been responsible for a huge swathe of crime." But the problem is not just about policing. In a statement, Commander Richard Smith from the National Police Chiefs' Council, which brings together senior officers to help develop policing strategy, said it would "continue to target" the most prolific criminals.

"We know that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem," he said.

"Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets."

Tracking and disabling
Stolen phones can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as "Find My iPhone" and "Find My Device", from Android.

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen phone could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs will also be tasked with gathering more intelligence on who is stealing phones and where stolen devices end up. A growing demand for second-hand phones, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a major driver behind the recent rise in thefts, the government said. The Home Office is to host a summit at which tech companies and phone manufacturers will be asked to consider innovations that could help stop phones being traded illegally. PC Evans said there was "no magic bullet", but he said there was one thing manufacturers could do which would be "enormously helpful" to the police - more accurate tracking. "At this moment in time, phone tracking is okay," he said.
"But it's not that scene in Total Recall yet, where you're able to run around with a tracking device in your hand, sprinting down the road after a little bleeping dot. "I appreciate it's a big ask from the phone companies to make that a thing, but that would be enormously helpful from a policing perspective."

Apple and Android did not provide the BBC with a statement, but Samsung said it was "working closely with key stakeholders and authorities on the issue of mobile phone theft and related crimes".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rdy132q3lo

The city is home to 17.6 million people and is a big tech hub, sometimes referred to as China's Silicon Valley.

Police could not help
In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did.
A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Akara subsequently submitted the pictures and information he had gathered from the locations where his stolen phone had been. The police acknowledged receipt but took no further action.

The Metropolitan Police had no comment to make on Akara’s specific case, but said it was “targeting resources to hotspot areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community”.

Lost photos of mum
Many other people have contacted the BBC with their experiences of having their phones taken. One, James O’Sullivan, 44, from Surrey, says he lost more than £25,000 when thieves used his stolen device's Apple Pay service.

Meanwhile, Katie Ashworth, from Newcastle, explained her phone was snatched in a park along with her watch, and a debit card in the phone case.

“The saddest thing was that the phone contained the last photos I had of my mum on a walk before she got too unwell to really do anything - I would do anything to get those photos back," the 36-year-old says.

Again, she says, there was a lack of action from the police.

"The police never even followed it up with me, despite my bank transactions showing exactly where the thieves went," she said.
"The police just told me to check Facebook Marketplace and local second-hand shops like Cex."

'Battle against the clock' for police
So why are the police seemingly unable to combat this offence - or recover stolen devices?

PC Mat Evans, who has led a team working on this kind of crime for over a decade within West Midlands Police, admitted that only "quite a low number" of phones that are stolen actually get recovered.

He says the problem is the speed with which criminals move.

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Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.
A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike - Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 "snatch thefts" in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months.
The prosecution rate for this offence is very low - the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot "arrest their way out of the problem". They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

Victims of the crime have been telling the BBC of the impact it has had on them - ranging from losing irreplaceable photos to having tens of thousands of pounds stolen.

And for Akara, like many other people who have their phone taken, there was another frustration: he was able to track where his device went, but was powerless to get it back.

He put his iPhone 13 into lost mode when he got home an hour or so later - meaning the thieves couldn't access its contents - and turned on the Find My iPhone feature using his laptop.

This allowed Akara to track his phone's rough location and almost immediately he received a notification to say it was in Islington. Eight days later, the phone was pinging in different locations around north London again.

In a move he says he "wouldn't recommend" with hindsight, he went to two of the locations his phone had been in to "look around".
"It was pretty risky," he said. "I was fuelled by adrenaline and anger."

He didn't speak to anyone, but he felt he was being watched and went home.

"I am really angry," he said. "The phone is expensive. We work hard to earn that money, to be able to buy the handset, and someone else says 'screw that'."

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again - his prized possession was now on the other side of the world - in Shenzhen, China.

Akara gave up.

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen - where if devices can't be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

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Maybe because they'll take off their wig and deal with people:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4nB42by6M4

But seriously, some dudes just like big girls.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema on Wednesday jointly witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the revitalization project of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railway.

Hassan and Hichilema are in Beijing for the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which is taking place from Wednesday to Friday.

While meeting with Tanzania's Hassan on Wednesday, President Xi said that China is willing to take the summit as an opportunity to push for new progress in the revitalization project of the TAZARA railway and jointly improve the rail-sea intermodal transport network in East Africa.

These efforts will help Tanzania become a demonstration zone for deepening high-quality Belt and Road cooperation between China and African countries, Xi said.

The revitalization of the TAZARA railway holds important symbolic significance - it is not only a historical testament to traditional China-Africa friendship but also a key project in promoting regional connectivity in Africa, Song Wei, a professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The 1,860-km single-track railway was constructed through an interest-free loan from China and started operation in 1976. It links Dar es Salaam in Tanzania with New Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.

Song noted that the TAZARA railway has played a crucial role in transporting copper from Zambia to Tanzania for export overseas, significantly contributing to the economic development of both countries.

However, the railway has encountered poor management, aging infrastructure and reduced capacity over time, Song said.

China has discussed how to update the TAZARA railway and enhance its role in promoting Africa's development. With the signing of the MoU, the three countries can make further efforts in its revitalization, analysts said.

Some have proposed developing the TAZARA railway into a tourist project, which would not only attract visitors but also promote Africa's green economic development, providing new growth opportunities for local communities.

Song said the TAZARA railway could serve as a pilot to explore how to achieve sustainable operation after a project was handed overed to African countries.

In this way, the TAZARA railway could continue to serve as a bridge for China-Africa friendship while offering new momentum for Africa's economic development and China-Africa cooperation, Song said.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202409/1319255.shtml

Traffickers in Europe are picking up on this idea, too. In October police in Italy arrested 33 people for alleged involvement in laundering more than €50m ($53m) for drug-traffickers. Among those detained were seven Chinese citizens. An Italian officer in charge of the operation suggested to Reuters, a news agency, that the amount handled by the alleged launderers was probably far greater than the police had managed to detect. Also that month, police in Italy and Spain arrested 78 people for alleged participation in a cannabis-trafficking network. Europol said the syndicate had involved people of several nationalities, including Albanians and Moroccans. Payments for drug shipments were handled by Chinese feiqian bankers.

In South-East Asia governments face “unprecedented challenges” from transnational organised crime, according to the UNODC. Ask Singapore, which has been rocked in recent months by its biggest money-laundering scandal. It has involved the seizure or freezing of more than $2bn held in bank accounts or as assets such as luxury properties, cars and gold. This month a court in Singapore sentenced two of ten Chinese citizens (some of them holding other passports as well) who were arrested in connection with the case. The pair have been given terms of 13 months and 14 months in prison. One forfeited assets worth more than $120m.

The UNODC says organised crime in the region has flourished thanks to “record levels” of the production of synthetic drugs in the “Golden Triangle” of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand. They have been served by fast-growing underground banking networks that use casinos, online betting platforms and cryptocurrencies to launder the traffickers’ money. China’s efforts to prevent its citizens’ access to all of these (warning, for example, that visiting casinos abroad may be considered illegal by Chinese police) have not ended the problem. “It has never been easier to set up an online casino operation with limited technical expertise and overhead capital, irrespective of gambling laws within a given jurisdiction,” the UNODC said.

It is also easy to hook up with the Chinese brokers. Offers of their services abound on social media such as Facebook and WeChat. Underground bankers (often referred to online as chedui, or motorcades) use such internet platforms to recruit people as “money mules”, as those who allow their bank accounts to be used for laundering are known. They often target Chinese students abroad, who may be attracted by commissions and unaware of the risks. In December Europol announced it had identified nearly 11,000 mules and 500 recruiters in 26 countries, leading to the arrest of more than 1,000 people around the world.

In 2022 China’s police launched a three-year campaign against money-laundering that has so far brought more than 2,300 people to court. One case, announced in December, involved the arrest of 74 people in 17 provincial-level areas suspected of handling nearly 16bn yuan ($2.1bn) in feiqian-style deals. They allegedly moved money through more than 1,000 bank accounts, each with an average daily turnover of 3m yuan. This is the tip of the iceberg. America says more than $150bn in illicit proceeds moves through China annually.

China’s agreement with America to liaise in the fight against money-laundering was announced by America’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, during a visit to Beijing earlier this month. Her country, she said, “cannot do it alone”. She said weaknesses in regulatory regimes in China and other countries were helping criminal gangs involved in everything from human-trafficking to fraud. But even with the best will in the world it would be hard to control a problem so large, complex and easily hidden as money-laundering has become. For officials in two mutually wary countries that have little experience of joint law enforcement, it will be harder still.

https://www.economist.com/china/2024/04/22/how-chinese-networks-clean-dirty-money-on-a-vast-scale

China’s anxiety is evident, too. It worries about the conduit provided by underground banks for evading the country’s strict foreign-exchange controls (capital flight, even by legitimate means, is a persistent headache: see chart). Mainland Chinese are not allowed to send more than $50,000 a year out of the country. For many rich Chinese, that is far from enough.

Chinese often turn to illicit financiers not to launder cash, but to move some of their wealth abroad. Such demand is only likely to grow as China’s economy falters. Some of these people are criminals, including corrupt officials who want to park their ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of China’s police. They have cause to be nervous: China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has been waging a war against graft. In 2022 the chief prosecutor’s office said anti-money-laundering efforts were part of “a major national strategy for maintaining the country’s political and financial security”. According to state media, China is working on the biggest changes to its anti-money-laundering law since it came into force in 2007.

Several factors are making the problem much harder to deal with. First is the rapid evolution of a centuries-old culture of informal banking based on what is often known as the feiqian (flying money) system. Its origins have nothing to do with crime. It began as a way for traders to settle accounts without the need to carry cash over long distances. Like the hawala system that is popular in the Middle East and South Asia, feiqian depends on trust: a sum of money exchanged between two parties in one location is matched by an equivalent transaction in another.

In China feiqian has remained in common use as a way of getting international deals done quickly, without the encumbrance of banks. Chinese workers abroad often use such methods to send remittances home. The near-universal use among Chinese of WeChat, a messaging app that is often linked to people’s bank accounts, has turbocharged the feiqian system.

America’s opioid epidemic has given it a further boost. Some of the billions of dollars in cash generated by drug demand is smuggled back, at considerable risk, to the cartels in Mexico. Some is handed over to Mexican money-launderers, who charge high commissions: usually between 8% and 12%, according to Ms Kent and Mr Gay. Chinese launderers provide a much cheaper option, even virtually free.

This is made possible both by the feiqian system and the huge needs of Chinese wanting access to dollars. The Chinese money-launderers take the drug money and sell it for yuan at a high profit: feiqian enables a buyer in America to send the specified equivalent in yuan from their bank account in China to one or more accounts in China controlled by the launderers. With no money crossing borders, this kind of swap is extremely difficult for America’s investigators to spot. The sums are often broken up into smaller amounts that do not draw the attention of China’s enforcers, either. The yuan in China may then be used there to buy goods that are shipped to Mexico and sold for pesos that are handed over to the cartels. The Chinese brokers arrange delivery of the pesos nearly instantly after the receipt of the dirty dollars. “They are very, very efficient at what they do,” says Laurence Howland, a former investigator at Britain’s tax agency.

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IT IS RARE these days for America and China to co-operate on anything. As The Economist went to press, America’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was on a trip to China, in part to press his hosts to stop sending weapons-related materials to Russia’s defence industries. He will be lucky to get a polite smile. So it is noteworthy that the two countries have recently decided to boost mutual support in another domain: the fight against money-laundering. This month they launched a bilateral forum to discuss the problem. Unlike Russia, it is a big one for both of them.

The menace has grown in recent years, fuelled by underground Chinese networks equipped with new technologies that can enable dirty money to be washed clean in minutes. For transnational criminal gangs, these shadowy “banks” are becoming the financiers of choice. Suppressing them requires the two great powers to talk. Amid their political rancour, discussions about money-laundering had been on ice for years. Their resumption marks “a big change, a big positive change”, says an official from America’s Treasury Department.

In America the threat is a matter of life and death. In the 12 months to November 2023 more than 105,000 Americans were killed by overdosing on drugs, mainly fentanyl and other synthetic opioids smuggled into the country from Mexico. Chinese underground banks play a crucial role in this by enabling Mexican cartels to launder their proceeds swiftly and at low cost.

In a paper published in 2021 by the American Intelligence Journal, Virginia Kent of the State Department and Robert Gay of the National Intelligence University in Maryland wrote of a “bloodless coup” by Chinese money-handling organisations, noting how, in recent years, they have largely displaced home-grown ones in Mexico. The authors called these Chinese operators “a new and more challenging money-laundering foe”.

The American government has been sounding the alarm. In its “National Money Laundering Risk Assessment” of 2022, the Treasury Department highlighted the involvement of Chinese illicit finance, saying that drug-traffickers were making increasing use of it. The department’s latest such report, published in February, said that Chinese organisations had since become “more prevalent” and were now among the “key actors” laundering money around the globe. American officials hope that the new money-laundering forum, along with another launched by America and China this year to tackle drug-trafficking, will help fight them.

Other authorities have been chiming in, too. In 2019 Europol, the EU’s police agency, said money-laundering by Asian criminal groups, particularly Chinese ones, presented a “growing threat to Europe”. It called the Chinese gangs “extremely flexible”, saying they were handling “substantial proceeds” from a variety of criminal activity. In January the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported on a “revolution” under way in South-East Asia’s “underground banking architecture”, involving everything from casinos to cryptocurrency. The details it provided suggested that Chinese gangs were at the forefront.

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The Development Bank of Southern Africa has approved as much as $200 million for the US-backed Lobito corridor rail project that will haul critical minerals from central Africa’s copperbelt to an Atlantic port in Angola.

“The railway line is part of a broader strategy to support the energy transition by facilitating the export of critical minerals needed for renewable-energy technologies,” Mpho Mokwele, executive for transacting at DBSA, said in a statement Tuesday. “The Lobito corridor is expected to become the most competitive route for exporting these minerals, offering significant cost and time savings for exporters.”

The lender is providing the financing alongside the US International Development Finance Corp., which has approved $553 million for the project. A group that includes commodities trader Trafigura Group and Portuguese construction company Mota Engil SGPS SA won a 30-year concession to operate the railway line that links the Lobito port to Angola’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The project is part of a US plan to secure access to critical minerals such as copper and cobalt, while at the same time trying to gain influence in a region that China has dominated. The Chinese government is set to sign a deal this week with Zambia and Tanzania to upgrade and take over the concession for another rail line that links copper mines with the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam.

https://www.mining.com/web/us-backed-angola-rail-plan-secures-200-million-from-key-bank/

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Human trafficking-fueled fraud is exploding in Southeast Asia with organized crime rings raking in close to $3 trillion in illicit revenue annually, the head of Interpol has said in comments that reveal the huge profits being earned by cartels.

One international organized crime group makes $50 billion a year, according to Interpol secretary-general Jurgen Stock, adding that $2 trillion to $3 trillion of illicit money flows through the global financial system annually. To compare, France’s economy is worth $3.1 trillion according to the International Monetary Fund.

While drug trafficking contributes around 40% to 70% of organized crime income, criminal groups are also using those smuggling networks to illegally move humans, arms and stolen products among other things, Stock said.

“Driven by online anonymity, inspired by new business models and accelerated by Covid, these organized crime groups are now working at a scale that was unimaginable a decade ago,” Stock told a briefing at the global police coordination body’s Singapore office on Wednesday.

“Today, a bank – or indeed anyone – is less likely to be robbed at gunpoint than via a keyboard by someone on the other side of the world.

“What began as a regional crime threat in Southeast Asia has become a global human trafficking crisis, with millions of victims, both in the cyber scam centers and as targets.”

Interpol says its operations in Asia have led to nearly 3,500 arrests and the seizure of $300 million in illegally earned assets across 34 countries since 2021.

Survivor testimonies, NGO campaigning and media reporting over the past three years have increasingly exposed an explosion in online fraud gangs operating in Southeast Asia, many using de facto slave labor to target people across the globe, including the United States.

Victims from across Asia are often duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.

Hundreds of thousands of people are trafficked into online criminality across the region, according to a United Nations report last year.

The UN estimated that up to 120,000 people could be held in compounds across Myanmar, which has been plunged into civil war since a 2021 military coup, with another 100,000 people held in Cambodia and elsewhere in conditions that amount to modern slavery.

Criminal enterprises also exist in Laos, Thailand and the Philippines, with many of the lucrative online scam operations ranging from illegal gambling, to love scams and crypto fraud.

In heavily guarded compounds controlled by local warlords, tens of thousands of people, mainly Chinese, have been trapped and forced by criminal gangs to defraud strangers with sophisticated schemes over the internet. Beijing has pressed Myanmar’s military government to rein in the scam operations, but with limited success.

Read more here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/28/asia/southeast-asia-interpol-scam-human-trafficking-crime-intl-hnk/index.html

Imagine stalking someone online...finding their pics and posting them...and all because of them posting food.

tensazangetsu20:
Why aren't you in the US doing the hustle?

I'm not sure what you're trying to suggest here. This is pretty common information in the US, but it may be something that some people who just got to the US or who are outside of it wouldn't think to do. I think part of the reason is they may not realize how easy it is and/or how much money you can make. Furthermore, I haven't offered to sell anyone anything in exchange for providing this information.

Though I have considered doing this hustle in the past, I don't do it for the same reason I'm not a mechanic, truck driver, or nurse. It's not something I want to do, or the type of business I'd like to start. But the simple fact that I'm not doing it doesn't mean that it, or being a mechanic/truck driver/nurse, is somehow bad, or that I'm trying to mislead anyone.

And you sound ignorant and childish responding to something with "wHy ArEn'T yOu." If you have a specific question about something, ask it. If you have some sort of point to make, state it.

Landscaping, Snow Removal, Junk Removal, and Tree removal.

No, it's not glamorous, but this is a great hustle for people in the US, specifically in the northeast and great lakes region. You do need some equipment, and I don't have all the details as far as requirements for a full-on business, but it's not super expensive or complicated.

You'll generally need a pickup truck, mower, edge trimmer, hedge trimer, tree trimmer, snow plow, snow blower, dolley, and some other small items. You don't need it all, it depends on what you decide to do. You have a lot of options. If you just want a little side money, you can do small jobs when you feel like it. You can also set up long-term contracts. Even just plowing driveways in a upper class suburb (100USD average for a driveway) pays pretty well. Tree removal makes bank (1200USD average per tree), but it's pretty dangerous. Even when you know what you're doing, it's risky, and you need heavier equipment. Junk hauls (taking old furniture to the dump) pay pretty well (300USD average for a haul), but aren't kind to your body and are pretty risky as well (heavy lifting). But you can easily sell some of this "junk." You can also cheaply repair, restore, and/or redesign it.

There are people who make serious money doing this, enough to buy a big house, put their kids through college, and get some nice cars. They basically set up their business (business structure, insurance, etc), get a bunch of heavy equipment, hire family members, get some Mexicans/Guatemalans/etc. (dirt cheap labor), and get solid long-term contracts. No mystery there.

Part of the article that I didn't post:

The work is "the worst in the world," he says. "You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."

He is currently working on the 67th floor of a shiny new tower, where he builds upwards, into the sky, into the heat. He doesn't know its name. In his four years here, he has never seen the Dubai of tourist-fame, except as he constructs it floor-by-floor.

Is he angry? He is quiet for a long time. "Here, nobody shows their anger. You can't. You get put in jail for a long time, then deported." Last year, some workers went on strike after they were not given their wages for four months. The Dubai police surrounded their camps with razor-wire and water-cannons and blasted them out and back to work.

The "ringleaders" were imprisoned. I try a different question: does Sohinal regret coming? All the men look down, awkwardly. "How can we think about that? We are trapped. If we start to think about regrets..." He lets the sentence trail off. Eventually, another worker breaks the silence by adding: "I miss my country, my family and my land. We can grow food in Bangladesh. Here, nothing grows. Just oil and buildings."

Since the recession hit, they say, the electricity has been cut off in dozens of the camps, and the men have not been paid for months. Their companies have disappeared with their passports and their pay. "We have been robbed of everything. Even if somehow we get back to Bangladesh, the loan sharks will demand we repay our loans immediately, and when we can't, we'll be sent to prison."

This is all supposed to be illegal. Employers are meant to pay on time, never take your passport, give you breaks in the heat – but I met nobody who said it happens. Not one. These men are conned into coming and trapped into staying, with the complicity of the Dubai authorities.

Sahinal could well die out here. A British man who used to work on construction projects told me: "There's a huge number of sui***es in the camps and on the construction sites, but they're not reported. They're described as 'accidents'." Even then, their families aren't free: they simply inherit the debts. A Human Rights Watch study found there is a "cover-up of the true extent" of deaths from heat exhaustion, overwork and sui***e, but the Indian consulate registered 971 deaths of their nationals in 2005 alone. After this figure was leaked, the consulates were told to stop counting.

At night, in the dusk, I sit in the camp with Sohinal and his friends as they scrape together what they have left to buy a cheap bottle of spirits. They down it in one ferocious gulp. "It helps you to feel numb", Sohinal says through a stinging throat. In the distance, the glistening Dubai skyline he built stands, oblivious.

Read the rest of the article here:

https://newlinesmag.com/spotlight/the-politics-of-turkeys-coke-connection/

While this history remains crucial to the context of events happening now, there is not necessarily a direct line of continuity. To understand how and why a cocaine baron like Rexhepi came to settle in Istanbul, one must appreciate two parallel developments at the heart of his story.

On the one hand, Rexhepi’s criminal career is emblematic of an ongoing expansionist pattern specific to the global cocaine trade. Since the days of Pablo Escobar and the rise of the Medellin Cartel, cocaine traffickers have labored to find new routes and markets to sell their wares. The quest to find safer smuggling routes into the United States and Europe pushed criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere to exploit a variety of points of transit in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. By the 1990s, particularly resourceful traffickers discovered equally effective routes through West Africa.

The diversification of trading corridors ran in tandem with the slow growth of cocaine consumption outside North America and Western Europe. By the early 2000s, scholars and journalists took increasing note of rising cocaine use in Russia and the Middle East. Until recently, Turkey and Turkish traffickers aided minimally in the growth and development of the cocaine trade. While there is evidence that Turkish gangsters bartered heroin for cocaine as early as the 1990s, it is generally assumed that the amount passing into or through Turkey tended to be small. In 2008, for example, only 230 pounds of cocaine was seized in the entire country. Of that, almost 60% came by way of couriers arrested arriving at Turkish airports.

Recent seizures now dwarf these early sums. In 2021, Turkish officers confiscated over 6,000 pounds of cocaine. United Nations data from 2022 suggests that the flow of cocaine into Turkey has not subsided. Nevertheless, Turkey appears to remain a relatively isolated point of entry for cocaine smugglers. By comparison, Belgian police confiscated more than 240,000 pounds of cocaine in 2022, more than double the amount seized five years earlier.

The second element enabling the likes of Rexhepi has been the incredible diversification of cocaine trafficking organizations. Of course, the smuggling of cocaine has always drawn an astonishing variety of characters and groups. Before the 1970s, muling cocaine was a small-scale trade plied by Bolivians, Peruvians, Chileans and others hailing from South America. Just before the dawn of the Medellin and Cali Cartels, authorities in the United States spoke warily of a “Cuban mafia” in charge of the trade. Fans of the Netflix show “Narcos” and “Narcos: Mexico” can readily attest to the events that came after.

What is generally less appreciated is the incredible number of European and Middle Eastern entrepreneurs who sought to establish their own cocaine pipelines back across the Atlantic. Among the earliest of these trailblazers was Sami al-Khoury, one of the reputed architects of the infamous “French Connection” heroin network. In addition to smuggling large quantities of opiates from Lebanon, Khoury also stood accused of being among the first to import cocaine via his Beirut-based prostitution ring. Other veterans of the French Connection network would join him, as would gangsters from Italy, Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Rexhepi’s ascendency represents a particularly recent, but by no means unprecedented, wave in this pattern of transatlantic activity. Evidence of ethnic Albanian involvement in the global trade dates back to the Cold War. In the early 1980s, American officials touted the existence of an “Albanian connection” linking Turkish heroin exporters to Yugoslavia-born New York retailers.

Ethnic Albanian networks became more visible with Yugoslavia’s dissolution and the end of communist rule in Tirana. As hundreds of thousands left the Balkans during the 1990s, police and pundits widely noted Albanian involvement in petty drug dealing as well as other organized crime activity. In this regard, Rexhepi stands as something of an exception. Originally a law student in Tirana, it is reported that he chose to become an assassin and drug trafficker out of a desire for a better life. “I had two options,” he declared in 2022, “surrender to the rotten system in Albania or look for something else in my life.”

After evading a 25-year prison sentence for murder, Rexhepi drifted between Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. After gaining a slew of indictments in each of these states, he found himself in Ecuador, joining what became the first wave of professional criminals to settle in the country. With Ecuador’s lax visa restrictions and its proximity to the coca-producing regions in the Andes, Rexhepi and others found in Guayaquil a base in which to thrive. A hefty prison sentence for cocaine trafficking in 2014 failed to put an end to his dealings. From his cell he served as the head of a cartel made up of 14 Albanian crime groups calling themselves the Kompania Bello. And then in 2021, inexplicably, an Ecuadorian court granted him home release on the grounds that Rexhepi suffered from lupus. He promptly disappeared, only to emerge in police custody in Istanbul years later.

Article continues in the next post.

In early November 2023, Turkey’s minister of the interior announced that they had arrested a man whom newspapers styled the “king of cocaine.” Police apprehended Dritan Rexhepi in the exclusive seaside community of Beylikduzu, just outside of Istanbul.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya proudly tweeted video footage of police raiding Rexhepi’s palatial home, including shots of officers laying out what appears to have been the suspect’s extensive collection of luxury watches. Despite an international warrant for his role in South American drug trafficking, the images suggested Rexhepi’s life in upscale Istanbul was one of comfort and leisure. Nevertheless, Turkish news outlets rejoiced at the announcement.

Rexhepi is just one of a series of high-profile drug trafficking suspects apprehended in Turkey in the last year. In one sense, this reflects a deepening Turkish war on narcotics. Recent statistics drawn from the Turkish prison system underscore the sheer scale of the government’s counternarcotics agenda. Almost 350,000 people are currently incarcerated in the country, far more than any other state in Europe. Of this number, a whopping 34% are in prison on drug-related charges.

An even starker indicator of current events in Turkey can be found in the size of drug seizures at Turkish ports. Over the last several years, police have intercepted a series of shipments arriving from South America, each containing several tons of cocaine. It would appear that it is this trend that led Rexhepi to take up residence in Istanbul.

In truth, Turkey is one of many European nations that have been inundated by a tidal wave of cocaine. In 2022, for example, police in the Netherlands interdicted more than 200,000 pounds of cocaine entering the country, more than three times the amount five years before. One explanation for this is the continued growth of coca cultivation in South America, which has continued at a record-setting pace over the last several years. The ready supply of the drug has helped maintain strong demand in Western Europe and created new markets in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Yet critics of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have interpreted the country’s current cocaine problem in an entirely different light. The apprehension of numerous drug kingpins comes in the wake of accusations and scandals concerning corruption within the ranks of the government. With the country continuing to flounder under the weight of hyperinflation and income inequality, the rising tide of doubt among embittered voters could not come at a worse time for Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party. With his tenure and legacy on the line, Turkey’s president appears determined to fight allegations that his government is corrupt.

Awell-seasoned news consumer would likely be familiar with Turkey’s historic place within the international drug trade. Its notoriety goes back decades. At the height of the American heroin epidemic in the 1970s, Turkey drew admonishments from Washington for what was seen as the country’s inability or unwillingness to halt illicit production of opium.

Much has changed since those dark days, dramatized in the 1978 film “Midnight Express.” By the 1980s, Turkey had fully evolved into a transit state for heroin produced in Pakistan and Afghanistan. By then, an exclusive class of native Turkish traffickers had begun to branch out into Europe and North America. Integral to this transformation was the ability of Turkish gangsters to cooperate with like-minded partners in the Balkans.

A shocking display of this nexus came as a result of revelations stemming from the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in May 1981. With the arrest of Mehmet Ali Agca, the pontiff’s would-be killer, international attention shifted to the fact that he had resided in Bulgaria alongside known Turkish heroin dealers working with a state-run import-export company. What became known as the “Balkan Route” grew in complexity through the 1990s. In the shadow of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, Turkish traffickers relied increasingly on ethnic Albanian collaborators bringing illicit heroin to the European marketplace. The depth and extent of these networks became the subject of greater European interest and anxiety as the new millennium got underway.

Article continues in the next post.

East and Southeast Asia are awash in record amounts of methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in a new report Tuesday. It traced their source largely to the cross-border region known as the Golden Triangle where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet.

The region is historically known for growing opium and hosting many of the labs that convert it to heroin.

“We have become used to record seizures, but the scale meth production in the Golden Triangle has now reached is massive. So are the profits generated,” Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC’s deputy regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, told The Associated Press. “For East and Southeast Asia, we are now looking at something closer to $80 billion per year feeding back into the region’s illicit economies.”

The Golden Triangle area has seen decades of political instability.

Myanmar’s frontier regions are largely lawless and exploited by drug producers and traffickers. In recent decades, it has become the region’s epicenter for illegal amphetamine products. A 2021 military takeover that unseated the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered armed resistance nationwide further destabilized the country.

The new report said the total amount of methamphetamine seized in East and Southeast Asia reached a record 190 tons in 2023. Some 89% of that came from Southeast Asia, with much of that from the Golden Triangle.

The 1.1 billion seized methamphetamine tablets, weighing 98.3 tons, were the most ever reported for the region, as were the 90 tons of seized crystal methamphetamine, the report said.

Even regional seizures of the party drug ecstasy, though representing a very small portion of the illicit synthetic drugs trafficked in the region, reached record levels last year of over 26.7 million tablets, mostly originating from Europe, the report said.

It also highlighted the increasing appearance in recent years of ketamine, a powerful anesthetic used for patients undergoing surgery but recently employed for treating depression and anxiety, as well as for recreational use.

The U.N. report said networks that make and traffic ketamine have diversified their business model and supply channels, moving from other parts of East and Southeast Asia into the Golden Triangle area of Myanmar and, more recently, into other countries in the lower Mekong River basin.

The region’s production of methamphetamine is concentrated in eastern Myanmar’s Shan State — the heartland of the Golden Triangle — especially in areas known as Special Regions where ethnic minorities with their own armies enjoy some privileges of self-government, the report said.

“The illicit drug manufacturing activity is undertaken by Asian organized crime groups who have partnered with armed groups in Shan,” it said.

Myanmar’s northern and eastern border regions have also become notorious for harboring major organized crime operations in casinos involving online scams, illegal gambling and human trafficking.

“The growing convergence of drug trafficking and emerging forms of organized crime in the Mekong is a major concern,” said UNODC’s Hofmann. “An online casino may be used to launder proceeds from the drug economy, while the same building may house a scam center – all in the hands of one criminal group which offers additional criminal services via Telegram and other channels.”

The report also said drugs originating from Myanmar are increasingly being smuggled to other countries along maritime routes. The drugs are sent as far as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand and other Pacific nations.

“Trafficking routes combining complex land-based and maritime corridors have become more common, essentially creating super-highways for large drug shipments out of the Mekong, many of which go undetected,” Hofmann said.

https://apnews.com/article/crystal-methamphetamine-golden-triangle-shan-ketamine-cb5de08da123b150210793a667c0c149

A former New York state government official who worked for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul was charged Tuesday with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government, federal prosecutors revealed in a sprawling indictment.

Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government before rising to the rank of deputy chief of staff for Hochul, was arrested Tuesday morning along with her husband, Chris Hu, at their $3.5 million home on Long Island.

Prosecutors said Sun, at the request of Chinese officials, blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office, shaped New York governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government and attempted to facilitate a trip to China for a high-level politician in New York, the indictment said. Hu is charged with money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.

In return, she and her husband received benefits including help for Hu’s China-brd business activities and undisclosed tickets to performances by visiting Chinese orchestra and ballet groups, the indictment says. A Chinese government official’s personal chef prepared “Nanjing-style salted ducks” that were delivered to Sun’s parents’ home, it adds.

The couple then laundered the financial proceeds, using them to buy their property in Manhasset, a condominium in Hawaii for $1.9 million, and luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari, the indictment says.

“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”

A lawyer for Sun, Seth DuCharme, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Sun and Hu are expected to make an initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn said.

The indictment outlines a series of exchanges Sun had with officials in the Chinese Consulate in New York in January 2021, when Cuomo was still governor and Hochul was lieutenant governor. Neither leader is named in the document, but are instead referred to as “Politician-1” and “Politician-2.”

After Chinese officials requested a Lunar New Year video from the governor, Sun said Hochul could probably do it and asked for “talking points of things you want her to mention.”

“Mostly holiday wishes and hope for friendship and cooperation / Nothing too political,” an official told her, according to the indictment.

Sun later told a different official that she had argued with Hochul’s speechwriter over the draft, because the speechwriter insisted on mentioning the “Uyghur situation” in China. She promised that she wouldn’t let that happen, and the final speech did not mention the Muslim ethnic minority, according to the indictment.

The FBI searched the couple’s $3.5 million home in Manhasset in late July but declined to release details at the time.

Sun worked in state government for about 15 years, holding jobs in Cuomo’s administration and eventually becoming Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. In November 2022, Sun took a job at the New York Department of Labor, as deputy commissioner for strategic business development, but she left that job months later in March 2023, the profile said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Hochul’s office said the administration fired Sun after “discovering evidence of misconduct.”

“This individual was hired by the Executive Chamber more than a decade ago. We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” the statement reads.

A spokesman for Cuomo did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.

Sun and Hu live in a gated community on Long Island called Stone Hill. The couple purchased the house in 2021 but placed it in a trust earlier this year, records show.

https:/fortune.com/2024/09/03/top-ny-state-official-accused-of-acting-as-undisclosed-agent-for-china-laundering-millions

Also:

Top NY state official accused of acting as undisclosed agent for China, laundering millions
https://fortune.com/2024/09/03/top-ny-state-official-accused-of-acting-as-undisclosed-agent-for-china-laundering-millions/

French and Spanish authorities crack down on Chinese money laundering gang

Prolific criminal network believed to have had the capacity to smuggle over one million euros in cash per day

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/french-and-spanish-authorities-crack-down-chinese-money-laundering-gang

Sinaloa drug cartel laundered millions through Chinese network in L.A., prosecutors say
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-18/sinaloa-cartel-chinese-money-laundering

UM:

Chinese nationals jailed over 'eye-watering' money laundering scheme in Melbourne's east
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-07/men-jailed-over-eye-watering-money-laundering-scheme/104195074

New York lobster exporter accused of money laundering, collusion with Chinese government
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/business-finance/new-york-lobster-exporter-accused-of-money-laundering-collusion-with-chinese-government

US announces major bust as efforts to crack down on Chinese money launderers working with drug cartels ratchet up
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/18/politics/us-chinese-money-launderers-drug-cartels/index.html

How Chinese networks clean dirty money on a vast scale
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/04/22/how-chinese-networks-clean-dirty-money-on-a-vast-scale

Here's the source:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Ladies, be prepared to defend yourself.

The next day I turned up at her office. "If you reveal my identity, I'll be sent on the first plane out of this city," she said, before beginning to nervously pace the shore with me. "It started like this. We began to get complaints from people using the beach. The water looked and smelled odd, and they were starting to get sick after going into it. So I wrote to the ministers of health and tourism and expected to hear back immediately – but there was nothing. Silence. I hand-delivered the letters. Still nothing."

The water quality got worse and worse. The guests started to spot raw sewage, condoms, and used sanitary towels floating in the sea. So[b] the hotel ordered its own water analyses from a professional company. "They told us it was full of fecal matter and bacteria 'too numerous to count'.[/b] I had to start telling guests not to go in the water, and since they'd come on a beach holiday, as you can imagine, they were pretty pissed off." She began to make angry posts on the expat discussion forums – and people began to figure out what was happening. Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea.

Suddenly, it was an open secret – and the municipal authorities finally acknowledged the problem. They said they would fine the truckers. But the water quality didn't improve: it became black and stank. "It's got chemicals in it. I don't know what they are. But this stuff is toxic."

She continued to complain – and started to receive anonymous phone calls. "Stop embarassing Dubai, or your visa will be cancelled and you're out," they said. She says: "The expats are terrified to talk about anything. One critical comment in the newspapers and they deport you. So what am I supposed to do? Now the water is worse than ever. People are getting really sick. Eye infections, ear infections, stomach infections, rashes. Look at it!" There is faeces floating on the beach, in the shadow of one of Dubai's most famous hotels.

"What I learnt about Dubai is that the authorities don't give a toss about the environment," she says, standing in the stench. "They're pumping toxins into the sea, their main tourist attraction, for God's sake. If there are environmental problems in the future, I can tell you now how they will deal with them – deny it's happening, cover it up, and carry on until it's a total disaster." As she speaks, a dust-storm blows around us, as the desert tries, slowly, insistently, to take back its land.

X. Fake Plastic Trees

On my final night in the Dubai Disneyland, I stop off on my way to the airport, at a Pizza Hut that sits at the side of one of the city's endless, wide, gaping roads. It is identical to the one near my apartment in London in every respect, even the vomit-coloured decor. My mind is whirring and distracted. Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City.

I ask the Filipino girl behind the counter if she likes it here. "It's OK," she says cautiously. Really? I say. I can't stand it. She sighs with relief and says: "This is the most terrible place! I hate it! I was here for months before I realised – everything in Dubai is fake. Everything you see. The trees are fake, the workers' contracts are fake, the islands are fake, the smiles are fake – even the water is fake!" But she is trapped, she says. She got into debt to come here, and she is stuck for three years: an old story now. "I think Dubai is like an oasis. It is an illusion, not real. You think you have seen water in the distance, but you get close and you only get a mouthful of sand."

As she says this, another customer enters. She forces her face into the broad, empty Dubai smile and says: "And how may I help you tonight, sir?"