New Delhi, Nov. 14 -- Such transnational crimes, which have swindled billions of dollars from people in Asia to the United States and elsewhere, will be high in the agenda when leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gather in an annual summit with their Asian and Western counterparts on Tuesday in the Philippine capital.

The Philippines currently holds the rotating leadership of ASEAN, an 11-nation bloc in a poverty-stricken region where criminal groups have used technology and resorted to human trafficking to expand their illicit and lucrative operations to other parts of the world.

The leaders of the expanded ASEAN bloc, called the East Asia Summit, will express their "grave concern over the escalating threat posed by t...