From the Mediterranean to the English Channel, the Rio Grande to Thailand, at any moment there are over 280 million people attempting to emigrate. But as governments spend more than ever on policing borders, each would-be migrant represents financial potential for the corrupt. Sex trafficking, drug mules, organ trading, forced labour; the flow of desperate people generates billions of dollars annually.

Every body has a price, as Barbie Latza Nadeau, great grand-daughter of a trafficked Afghan woman, 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 one Italian mob boss says 'Migrants are more profitable than drugs'.

From the criminal underworld to the highest echelons of national institutions, from mafia cartels to glamorous fashion houses, banks, governments, and even the Catholic Church, this ground-breaking investigation follows the money to reveal a secretive industry where lives don't matter, but where every body counts.