Organized crime and illicit trade flows have intensified in the last decades, conforming a new "triangle trade" linking Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Cocaine flowing down from the Andes through the Amazon to West African ports and thence to ravenous European retail drug markets is but the most notorious example. Stolen cars, endangered species, and even human beings, are all trafficked along these occult routes. Meanwhile, novel transnational networks are crystalizing, often employing paradoxical forms of criminal governance to control territories and routes while keeping state forces at bay. We propose to bring together active researchers from Africa and Europe, putting them in contact with leading scholarship on Latin American organized crime and criminal governance (often enough the same groups operating in Africa and Europe), hosting a Year 1 conference at the Center in Paris to present work and found a collaborative research network, and a Year 2 follow-up symposium to discuss partial results and next steps.