The United Nations sounded the alarm Thursday about the global threat from crime syndicates and urged coordinated action to target their profits through anti-money laundering and anti-corruption measures.

"Organized crime has gone global, reached macro-economic levels and poses a serious threat to the stability, even the sovereignty, of states," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told the UN General Assembly.

He said criminals were using the profits of crime and the threat or use of force to "influence elections, politicians and power -- even the military."

Costa said vulnerable countries, particularly in west Africa and Central America, were at greatest risk and called for improved development and security to make them "less attractive hosts to the parasites of crime."

He spoke as he unveiled UNODC's new report on "The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment," the first strategic review of the security threat posed by organized crime.

The study shows that organized crime is making "billions of dollars a year from the trafficking of drugs, guns, people, natural resources, counterfeit products, as well as maritime piracy and cyber crime," he added.

UNODC conducted the survey after UN member states and international organizations expressed alarm about the threat posed by transnational organized crime and stressed the need to combat it.

Costa said that a more effective fight against the crime syndicates requires shifting "focus from disrupting the mafias to disrupting their markets" through tighter measures to combat money laundering and corruption.

He also suggested cracking down on the accomplices of crime "like the army of white-collar criminals -- lawyers, accountants, realtors and bankers who cover up and launder their proceeds."

The UN official bemoaned the fact that 10 years after it was adopted in Palermo, Italy, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime "has suffered from benign neglect."

He called for universal adherence to and full implementation of the Convention, the world's only crime-fighting instrument.

Here are some the UNODC report's key findings:

-- An estimated 140,000 people are trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation in Europe alone, generating a gross annual income of three billion dollars for their exploiters.

-- The two most prominent flows for smuggling migrants are from Africa to Europe and from Latin America to the United States. Around 2.5-3 million migrants are smuggled from Latin America to the United States every year, generating 6.6 billion dollars for smugglers.

-- Europe is the highest value regional heroin market (20 billion dollars), while Russia is now the single largest national heroin consumer in the world (70 tons).

-- Although attention is mainly focused on the countries that grow most of the world's illicit drugs -- Afghanistan (opium) and Colombia (coca) -- most drug profits are made in the destination countries.

For example, out of a global market of perhaps 55 billion dollars for Afghan heroin, only about five per cent accrues to Afghan farmers, traders and insurgents.

And some 70 percent of the profits from the 72-billion-dollar cocaine market in North America and Europe are made by mid-level dealers in the consumer countries, not in the Andean region.

-- The illegal exploitation of natural resources and the trafficking in wildlife from Africa and southeast Asia are disrupting fragile eco-systems and driving species to extinction.

-- As much as half of medications tested in Africa and southeast Asia are counterfeited and substandard, increasing, rather than reducing the chance of illness.

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