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Every Body Counts: Money, lies, and the hidden trade in human lives
Abetted by gangs of people smugglers, today human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. As governments spend more than ever on policing borders, this ground-breaking investigation reveals a secretive world where lives don't matter, but where every body counts.
From the Mediterranean to the English Channel, the Rio Grande to Thailand, at any moment there are over 280 million people attempting to emigrate. While most migrants take legal channels, those outside the system represent financial potential for the corrupt. Sex trafficking, drug mules, organ trading, forced labour; the flow of desperate people generates billions of dollars annually, not only for smugglers who get them across borders, but also for traffickers.
Every body has a price, as the veteran investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau knows. Yet no other multi-billion pound transnational enterprise is less understood than the trade in humans, a fact that organised crime networks increasingly exploit as turn to migration for their profits. From the criminal underworld to the highest echelons of national institutions, from mafia cartels to glamorous fashion houses, banks, and governments, this ground-breaking investigation follows the money to reveal a clandestine industry.
From the Mediterranean to the English Channel, the Rio Grande to Thailand, at any moment there are over 280 million people attempting to emigrate. While most migrants take legal channels, those outside the system represent financial potential for the corrupt. Sex trafficking, drug mules, organ trading, forced labour; the flow of desperate people generates billions of dollars annually, not only for smugglers who get them across borders, but also for traffickers.
Every body has a price, as the veteran investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau knows. Yet no other multi-billion pound transnational enterprise is less understood than the trade in humans, a fact that organised crime networks increasingly exploit as turn to migration for their profits. From the criminal underworld to the highest echelons of national institutions, from mafia cartels to glamorous fashion houses, banks, and governments, this ground-breaking investigation follows the money to reveal a clandestine industry.
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Hardcover
Published March 27, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 18, 2025
Nadeau, a former employee of Newsweek, now CNN News Reporter, has, for decades, been reporting on human trafficking. This journalist-style book seeks to uncover the very broad spectrum of modern day, global practices of human exploitation and abuse. Giving plenty of factual detail together with true stories of personal experiences. Some of which is likely to be disturbing to those innocent of the ruthless cruelty and insatiable greed of a great many internationally and the subsequent suffering of their victims. For me, the consequences of both the 2020 world Lockdown & the current ongoing war in Ukraine were eye openers.
December 26, 2025
this was so informative on a topic I really sidelined; watched the movie Taken and immediately wanted to know more about human trafficking. the connection with migrants and displaced people is clear but my brain wouldn't have naturally made the connection. it is a hard read but written so well. huge focus on Italy since the author is based there which was shocking
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews