From drug dealers to loan sharks: how coronavirus empowers organised crime | Misha Glenny

At the outset, Covid-19 and the lockdown disoriented organised crime and its activities as much as the rest of us. But organised crime is not only adapting to the present, it is preparing to carve a lucrative future out of the crisis.

A week before lockdown in the UK, many drug dealers noticed a massive surge in of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Drugs were the toilet rolls of Britain’s criminal world. With good reason: a “” operator in west London who normally supplied cocaine and heroin to towns in Hampshire explained that, as soon as the government ordered people to stay at home, these drug networks closed down because it was too risky for the dealers to move