Outcomes from INVERT: A Risk-Based Tool Against Labour Exploitation

Labour exploitation has emerged as predominant purpose of human trafficking in Europe. A recent report from the European Commission revealed that the proportion of victims of human trafficking subjected to labour exploitation doubled between 2008 and 2023, now exceeding 40% of identified cases. During a recent meeting organised by Transcrime at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Milan, the Italian National Anti-Trafficking Network confirmed this shift: due to the prevalence of male workers in labour exploitation, the share of detected male victims rose from 13% in 2017 to 52.2% in 2025.

This expansion particularly affects sectors where subcontracting, transient workforces and low-skilled labour are endemic, such as agriculture, logistics, manufacturing and fashion. This is fuelled by multi-tiered supply-chains in which large clients outsource production through networks that combine bona fide suppliers with buffer and shell companies aimed at obscuring forced labour.

Rather than relying solely on reports from victims, which are often absent due to threats of reprisals or lack of awareness, the EU-funded project INVERT (https://invert-project.eu/) — coordinated by Transcrime — adopted a risk-based approach to enable proactive investigations. We examined how exploitation infiltrates supply chains, distilling risk factors and translating them into operational indicators. These were then implemented in the INVERT prototype suite and tested in pilot cases across Europe.

The results were presented at the project’s final conference in Brussels on 19 September 2025: a discussion with law enforcement agencies, NGOs, researchers, and policymakers.

Risk Indicators

The indicators are organised into two complementary sets, based on analyses of recurring patterns among both firms and victims.

Company-level indicators have been operationalised using machine learning techniques to assign risk area scores and flag entities potentially involved in exploitation. These can be grouped into three categories:

1. Territorial and sectoral exposure – e.g., high-risk jurisdictions, labour-intensive sectors, unusual geographic clustering;
2. Ownership and corporate history – e.g., opaque legal structures, lack of beneficial-owner information, recent incorporations, managerial turnover, links with bankrupt entities;
3. Financial anomalies – e.g., extensive outsourcing, unusually low declared labour costs, absence of substantive economic activity.

Victim-level indicators aim to structure the professional assessment of potential victims across migration pathways, contractual and working conditions, debt and housing situations, control mechanisms, and signs of coercion or trauma. This module of the tool acts as a support device— guiding analyses and interviews while organising sensitive information. Given the sensitive nature of this procedure, it is not designed to assign automatic scores, enabling contextualised evaluation.

Tool functionalities

The INVERT prototype suite streamlines investigations into complex supply chains, converting large volumes of corporate and financial data into intuitive visual insights. It automates time-consuming tasks and facilitates access to public datasets, supporting more accurate decision-making without replacing the analyst. To this end, end users are trained in efficient and informed use. The interface has been designed for exploration of networks, corporate structures, financial flows, and geographic relationships, while breaking down risk areas to avoid “black-box” outcomes. Pilots conducted with law enforcement partners confirmed both the tool’s predictive capabilities and its practical value for proactive, risk-led targeting.

Interested potential end-users are invited to contact transcrime@unicatt.it for further information.