Anti-corruption committee strains

Published: 14 October 2008

By Beth

Politicians, magistrates and mayors have all been the subject of Bulgarians’ phone calls and letters to the country’s anti-corruption committee, so much so that the committee’s head said that the committee had more than enough information.

Committee head Boiko Velikov, however, was careful to warn that only findings from courts or other institutions – not anonymous tip-offs from the public – would prove allegations of corruption. No word on how many of the committee’s tips are being investigated by Bulgarian prosecutors. 

Serbia: Former Heads of Official Gazette, Red Cross arrested

In Serbia’s latest additions to its announced crackdown on corruption, the former head of the Official Gazette (a government magazine that publishes laws) was arrested last week on suspicion of embezzling €2 million in a dodgy bonds deal, and the former Belgrade Red Cross secretary was arrested on suspicion of defrauding the Red Cross out of €80,000 by taking money for phantom projects that were never implemented.

In other Serbia news, the Serbian Interior Ministry last week announced that by arresting four suspects on drugs smuggling and illegal firearms charges, they had cut a drug route run by Montenegrin “narco-boss” Safet Kalic.

Swiss charge 10 in Euro-mafia cigarette smuggling

After years of speculations about and investigations into Montenegrin cigarette smuggling, Western European prosecutors are laying indictments and naming names. Earlier this month, Italian prosecutors indicted seven Italian, Serbian and Montenegrin nationals for their roles in getting falsely labeled cigarettes from the Balkans to Italy for further sale in the European Union. Last week, Swiss prosecutors laid indictments for the second string of the chain – the Europeans who are suspected of laundering the money earned in the smuggling.

Switzerland’s top prosecutor charged 10 people with laundering more than $1 billion in cigarette-smuggling money from the early 1990s until 2001. No date has been set for the trial, which will be the largest organized crime case ever prosecuted in Switzerland.

The defendants — five Swiss, three Italians, a Spaniard and a Frenchman — are accused of having used Switzerland as a hub for laundering money from Italy's powerful Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita organizations, the office of the Federal Prosecutor said. They were also charged with supporting or participating in a criminal organization.

The defendants were not identified because of Switzerland's privacy laws. Earlier, however, attorneys for three of the defendants in the southern, Italian-speaking canton (state) of Ticino identified them as Fredi Bossert, owner of a money exchange business; financier Franco Della Torre; and his Italian colleague, Michele Antonio Varano.

Drugs in the ‘Stans

We all know, or should know if we don’t live under rocks, a little bit about at least two countries between the Caspian Sea and the endless western borders of China and India: Afghanistan and Pakistan, those Central Asian cauldrons of trouble. But what about the other ‘Stan countries? There are five of them – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. And never mind Kazakhstan’s brush with fame over the Borat film: These are deeply obscure places, mostly because of geography (can anyone outside the region’s residents label a map with these countries?). Turkmenistan’s absolute lack of an independent press to report on events that happen there, and the fact that its president is named Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov certainly don’t make it any more accessible. The country’s sole claim to fame recently was that from 1985 to 2006, it was run by Saparmurat Niyazov, a madman who erected gold statues of himself in the capital, banned beards and ballet, and renamed the months of the year.


But Turkmenistan is part of the Heroin Road from Afghanistan into Europe. And a recent shoot-out between the security services and a drug gang in Ashgabat, the capital, has analysts worried that drug gangs are not the small, fragmented, relatively powerless entities the autocratic government would make them out to be. Transitions Online reports:

“It is likely that armed drug trafficking groups have formed in Turkmenistan," says Matthew Clements, a Eurasia analyst with Jane’s Information Group. "The government is likely to portray the drug traffickers to have been small and disorganized, but reports that several – possibly 20 or more – members of the security services were killed suggests that the group was well organized and well armed.”

In better-known-‘Stan-country news, NATO announced last week that the military alliance would be targeting Afghanistan’s opium labs for the first time since the allies invaded the country in 2001. Afghan security forces had previously been in charge of the fight against the illicit opium crop, but the United States is urging more aggressive tactics.

Italy seeks Canadians’ extradition under new law

Italian officials are using a new law outlawing “transnational Mafia associations” to try to extradite eight men of Italian origin from Canada. The men are allegedly part of a crime group that operates in and around Toronto, reports the Toronto Star:

The case marks the first time that Italian authorities have charged anyone with "transnational Mafia associations," and a local organized crime expert said this is a significant breakthrough for policing.

"They (Italian authorities) recognized for the first time that this organization is a transnational one, capable of starting a crime in one country and ending it in another," said GTA- (Greater Toronto Area) based organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso.

"Organized crime is borderless," said the author of several books on organized crime, who has lectured police forces on the Mafia. "Law enforcement has boundaries."

Italy has also continued arresting people within its own borders after the murders of six African immigrants last month, murders blamed on the Casalesi clan of the Naples-based Camorra mafia. Police and army paratroopers arrested seven alleged members of the Camorra on charges of homicide, criminal association and extortion, among other crimes, on Saturday. Among those arrested was an actor in the award-winning recent anti-Camorra film, “Gomorrah.” The Guardian reported that two other actors in the film – which used real Naples people in various roles to maximize realism – have also been arrested for various crimes in recent months. Critics are betting that the film will be nominated for an Oscar, just as Italy has basically declared martial law to fight the mob around Naples.

Based on the best selling book by the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, “Gomorrah” describes the vice-like grip of the Camorra on Naples through drug dealing, building contracts, prostitution and the dumping of toxic waste in fertile agricultural land, as well as control over the city's rubbish collection.

Saviano, who is now under police protection, has continued to campaign against the rule of the Casalesi clan, the most feared group within the Camorra, which has this year launched a campaign of killings, prompting the dispatch this month of 400 extra police and 500 soldiers to the clan's fiefdom around Casal di Principe. Yet killings have continued, despite the arrest of suspected hit men.

Saviano is not the only journalist the mob has its eye on. Though Rosaria Capacchione had been placed under 24-hour police protection after writing a series on Camorra money for local Naples paper il Mattino, burglars broke into her apartment and stole not jewels or cash, but a plaque she’d received earlier this year for her campaigning journalism.

UN talks organized crime, drugs, convention

Organized crime is hampering efforts to rebuild countries that have endured wars, the UN’s top police advisor told Interpol at its annual assembly in Russia last week. Police advisor Andrew Hughes told the gathered police that UN police and Interpol should collaborate in peacekeeping operations.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), meanwhile, reckons that the biggest public safety threat in the Americas is drug-related crime.

“Your citizens indeed say that what they fear the most is not terrorism, not climate change, not a financial crisis. It is public safety. And in the Americas, the biggest threat to public safety comes from drug trafficking and the violence perpetrated by organized crime,” (UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa) stated.

Mr. Costa pointed out that urban violence in the United States, biker gangs in Canada, the brutality and kidnapping in Mexico, the insurgency in Colombia and gangs in Brazilian shantytowns, Central America and the Caribbean are all connected to drug crime.
 
The UN last week opened a 10-day meeting aimed at reviewing the Convention on Transnational Organized Crime before the 147 countries that helped draft the convention begin implementing it. The convention calls for making extradition easier, mutual legal assistance and joint investigations. Officials also signed an agreement to open a Vienna anti-corruption academy to train top officials and police in preventing, detecting and getting rid of corruption and bribery. The school will open in 2009.

Three charged in Polish football corruption case

Polish police last week arrested three more football officials for allegedly handing out $40,000 in bribes between 2003 and 2006. Prosecutors in the western town of Wroclaw began investigating match-fixing in Polish football three years ago and have so far charged 153 people with fixing matches in the top Polish league.

Just one day after the arrests, Polish member of parliament Janusz Polikot offered up a pig’s head as a gift to the “football federation mafia” on late-night television.