Bulgaria’s Gangsters, Corruption - NYT

Published: 21 October 2008

By Beth

The European press blanket-covered Bulgaria’s fall from the European Union’s good graces over the summer, when the EU froze hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country over its organized crime and corruption problems. Now the New York Times has weighed in, in a lengthy story last week discussing the mob’s recent forsaking of the usual businesses – cigarettes and construction – for real estate, politics and EU aid. It’s relatively unusual for a major paper to publish long stories about obscure Balkan corners, but the NYT’s global edition, the International Herald Tribune, picked up the story as well. (Although its headline, “Bulgarian Corruption Troubling the European Union,” was muted compared to the NYT’s “Mob Muscles its Way into Politics in Bulgaria.”)

A few of the best lines from the article:

“Sofia guidebooks offer tips: Avoid restaurants that draw businessmen with four or more bodyguards.”

“Hitmen disguised themselves as drunks and Orthodox priests.”

“ ‘Other countries have the mafia,’ said Atanas Atanasov, a member of Parliament and a former counterintelligence chief who is a magnet for leaked documents exposing corruption. ‘In Bulgaria, the mafia has the country’ ”

The papers also ran the reaction from Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev, who vowed to hand over any tainted campaign contributions to charity after prosecutors received documents showing that Stanishev’s party took money from people thought to be part of a crime network.

While that may not help erase Bulgaria’s international black eye, a trial that opened Oct. 20 in Sofia may at least begin to alleviate the bruising. Deutsche Welle has the story:

A Bulgarian court on Monday launched a trial against 9 people accused of embezzling millions from European Union aid funds. The defendants were accused of stealing 14 million leva ($9.6 million) from funds made available to Bulgaria by the EU as part of the SAPARD (Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development) programme.

The defendants allegedly imported used machinery for meat processing, but forged documents so the machines could be registered as new. The EU fund was drawn upon for the cost of new equipment, with the defendants allegedly pocketing the difference.

Slavs Arrested in Spain, Monaco

Spanish police raided the Majorca island villa of Russian politician Vladislav Reznik over the weekend, seizing cars, computers, files, paintings and sculptures on the order of a Spanish judge who is investigating Reznik’s alleged links to the Tamboskaya mafia. Reznik is a deputy of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.

Mr Reznik, who was not at his Spanish home at the time of the raids, is being investigated over his supposed connections with fellow Russian Gennady Petrov, the suspected kingpin of an international crime organisation that allegedly used a network of Spanish registered companies to launder money earned through illicit activities.

Meanwhile, in Monaco, police arrested two members of an international diamond-thieving ring that calls itself the Pink Panthers. The group is suspected of stealing more than €100 million worth of diamonds in at least 100 armed robberies in nearly 20 countries. One of the men was a Serbian national, the other a Bosnian national.

Italy Arrests Suspected Calabrian Mob Leaders

Italian police arrested some powerful men in raids last week against the Calabrian mafia, or ‘Ndrangheta. Besides arresting an uncle and nephew with the same name – Gioacchino Piromalli – for allegedly plotting to regain control over smuggling at a large southern Italian container port, police also arrested the ex-mayor and deputy mayor of one town and the serving mayor of another. Another suspected Calabrian mob boss was arrested in his underground bunker last Thurday.

But the real drama in Italy last week revolved around the writer Roberto Saviano, whose best-seller on the Naples-based Camorra mafia, “Gomorrah,” has made him a marked man – particularly now that the film version of the book is likely to be up for an Oscar. Police last week announced they were looking into information that the Camorra wanted Saviano dead by Christmas. Local press, the NYT and the Times of London all reported that the Camorra’s Casalesi clan had planned to blow up Saviano’s car on the Naples-Rome highway.

Saviano has already been under 24-hour police protection for two years. He told an Italian paper last week that he felt like a prisoner in his own country, that hiding had ruined an important relationship and that if he could go back in time, he didn’t know if he would write the book again. It probably didn’t help that Salman Rushdie – who was the subject of an Iranian assassination order over his 1989 book The Satanic Verses – told the Daily Telegraph last week, “Saviano is in terrible danger…the Mafia poses a much more serious problem than the one I had to face.” Saviano indicated last week that he would probably leave Italy, the same day that the informant who had given the tip about the Camorra death threat recanted. 

The reach of the Camorra was shown last week not in the hullaballoo over the Saviano death threat, but in the murder of 60-year-old Stanislao Cantelli, just two days after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi sent in 500 paratroopers to get after the mob around Naples. The FT reports:
Mr Cantelli was playing cards in a social club on the high street of Casal di Principe - a satellite town and stronghold of the Camorra gangs - when someone walked in and fired 18 bullets. Paratroopers were 200 metres away. By the time the police arrived, the killer and all witnesses had fled. Shops were closing their shutters.

Police say Mr Cantelli, a retired cheese factory worker, paid the price for being the uncle of Luigi Diana, a Mafia "pentito" or turncoat whose information had led to the arrest of members of the Casalesi clan.

Anti-mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told the paper, “Checkpoints are not the answer,” and showed the reporter where a bug was found next to a guarded office where he and his colleagues used to have what they thought were confidential conversations. Gratteri said phone tapping was more effective. “Contrary to checkpoints, to fight against the Mafia one must camouflage oneself, forget to exist, disappear,” he said.

Or, forget the checkpoints and phone taps, and take advice from Pope Benedict XVI, who was in nearby Pompeii Sunday saying a Mass. He didn’t condemn or even mention the Camorra or organized crime, but a spokesman said, “The pope preferred suggesting the positive energy through which the Camorra can be defeated.”

Group: Enviro-Criminals Plunder Planet

Organized environmental criminals are plundering the planet to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually, and this type of crime is on the rise, according to a report the Environmental Investigation Agency released at the UN’s trans-border crime meeting last week.

EIA campaigns director Julian Newman said, "Our report shows how organized criminals are looting the planet for a quick profit. It is time for the international community to step up and meet this threat head on."

Environmental crimes are illegal acts which directly harm the environment, and include the illegal trade in wildlife, smuggling of ozone-depleting and global-warming substances, illicit trade in hazardous waste, illegal fishing, illegal logging and the associated trade in stolen timber.

From what Newman and the report said, it looks like “environmental criminals” have become just as organized as their non-environmental counterparts: Apparently, they’re operating across international frontiers and using sophisticated techniques to move illegal goods from point A to B and to launder the proceeds.

UK Slammed for Inaction  on Global corruption

The UK’s “continued failure” to introduce laws that clearly prohibit UK companies from bribing foreigners when doing business abroad was the subject of a report last week from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The OECD, a group of 30 of the world’s wealthier, free-market countries, said it was “disappointed and seriously concerned” about the UK’s continued failure to plug the holes in its laws regarding bribery of foreign officials and corporate liability for foreign bribery. The OECD’s working group on bribery also pointed out that though the UK ratified the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention 10 years ago, the country has not successfully prosecuted a single bribery case against any British company. (Last month, Britain made its first conviction of an individual businessman over foreign corruption.)

The recent review was begun earlier this year, after the UK’s Serious Fraud Office dropped its investigation into a suspect arms deal between British arms giant BAE and Saudi Arabia. The Guardian reported last week that BAE had most recently been accused of hiding the truth about the Saudi arms deals to get insurance from the British government; more details can be found here.

While British anti-corruption czar Jack Straw welcomed the OECD report, British businesses were not so cheerful. A British employers’ organization leader lambasted the OECD’s conclusion that it would be more expensive for companies abroad to do business with British companies, as the foreigners would have to do more due diligence and check-ups. The Financial Times reports:

“There is nothing in that report to back up the claims. It does seem to be a comment at the end of the report that bears little relationship to the content,” (Gary) Campkin said. It was “just wrong” to suggest Britain was not committed to tackling corporate overseas bribery, he said, adding that other leading OECD members such as Japan had also come in for criticism for not tackling corruption.

The OECD group has no formal powers to impose sanctions against Britain or force companies to change their behavior, but its criticisms will be widely noticed abroad and could have a reputational and practical impact on British multinationals. The group’s attacks highlight London’s slide towards pariah status over its failure to bring bribery prosecutions against its leading multinationals at a time when other European countries and the US are pursuing their companies.

Beijing Olympic Official Gets Death Sentence, Reprieve

Then there’s the Chinese approach to corruption.  Weekend headlines such as “Beijing Olympics Building Chief May be Executed for Corruption” highlighted the death sentence handed down to a Beijing vice-mayor who had taken $1 million in bribes during the city’s pre-Olympic building boom.

The sentence, however, was actually a suspended sentence. Liu Zhihua’s sentence will be turned into a life imprisonment after two years if he demonstrates good behavior.