I started researching the rise of this new form of transnational organised crime 14 years ago. During my travels around the globe talking to criminals and law enforcement officials, I realised how new mafias often operate like franchises.

And just as multinational corporations are often opaque, spreading their operations across many territories and tax havens with complex supply lines, so too are the new mafias.

The term mafia used to conjure up images of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in The Godfather, or Tony Soprano as the head of the mob in New Jersey. But in the early 1990s, mafias started to adapt to the new era of globalisation.

Rhino poaching networks are typical of the structure of the new mafias in the global marketplace.

Warning: This piece contains images that may be upsetting to some people.

James Norton stars in McMafia , the drama based on Misha Glenny's 2008 non-fiction book exploring global crime networks. The series is on Sunday at 21:00 GMT on BBC One.

Mark Galeotti, an expert on transnational crime and security in Russia, explained how it worked. One of the most powerful organised crime groups in Moscow was the Chechen mafia, many of whose members hailed from the lawless Russian republic of Chechnya.

“The Chechen mafia became a brand name, a franchise - McMafia if you like,” he explained. “They would sell the moniker ‘Chechen’ to protection rackets in other towns provided they paid, of course, and provided they always carried out their word. If a group claimed a Chechen connection, but didn’t carry out its threats to the letter, it was devaluing the brand. The original Chechens would come after them.”

This model started in Russia in the 1990s but it has now spread around the world across a range of criminal enterprises - everything from the Colombian drug cartels to Vietnamese groups trading in endangered wildlife species.

And then you have the emergence of the “mafia state” - a country run by and for a powerful clique or network of corrupt politicians and state intelligence officials with close links to organised criminal networks.

Russia under Vladimir Putin has often been accused of this.

So has North Korea.

In the case of Kim Jong-un’s regime, it’s because North Korea can’t or won’t integrate into the global financial system. As long as sanctions continue against Pyongyang, the only way it can obtain hard currency is through nefarious means.