Bulgaria Adopts Anti-OC Measures

Solving such entrenched problems is obviously not going to be easy for a country that has the reputation of being the most corrupt in the EU. One particular story from last week highlights what the new government is up against – the new customs director announced that the customs service has been ruled by organized crime groups for two decades.

(General Vanyo) Tanov spoke Monday in a special interview for the morning block of the Bulgarian TV channel bTV, adding that there was murky business both at the Customs Agency and the Interior Ministry.

The General said there were several such groups, which recently stopped fighting between each other since they managed to divide the country in zones of influence. Tanov explained further that those groups included experts, who often used good practices and even lobbied for the changing of the law so that the legislation served their own interests.

Tanov wouldn’t name names, but said he wouldn’t enter into agreements with the groups. He told Bulgarian television that he favors strict rules that everyone has to follow.

In other news from Bulgaria, customs officers seized a 95-kilo heroin shipment hidden in a Turkish truck headed from Turkey to Germany at the Bulgarian-Serbian border. The driver, a Turkish national, was arrested. The haul is thought to have a street value of around €20 million.

Southeastern Europe: Ministers Pledge Cooperation

Interior ministers from 14 countries gave speeches on cooperating internationally at a conference in Slovenia last week on illegal migration, organized crime, corruption and terrorism. Ministers from the so-called Western Balkans (the countries of the former Yugoslavia, minus Slovenia but plus Albania) agreed to set up international police cooperation units. Serbia’s interior minister noted that criminals in the region had no problem reaching agreements without formal signings. Austria, Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey all sent interior ministers to the conference.

While the ministers talked and planned for another conference in Belgrade later this month, a Montenegrin paper reported that police were still searching for another 10 members of a Balkans-based gang whose leaders were arrested two weeks ago. All of those on the run are Bosnian nationals and are believed to be involved in drug trafficking. Bosnian national Darko Elez and two dozen others were arrested earlier this month and are suspected of murder, drugs and arms trafficking and money laundering, among other crimes.

Arctic Sea Twist: A Secret Netanyahu Visit?

In yet another twist to the bizarre story of the Arctic Sea hijacking, a Russian paper last week reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had secretly visited Russia to talk about Russia’s arms exports to Iran and Syria.

The Arctic Sea, a Russian-crewed ship hauling under $2 million in timber, disappeared for three weeks in the summer. In August, the Kremlin said that the ship had been hijacked by pirates in the Baltic Sea; to some analysts, the story did not add up. One theory was that some private Russians or organized crime figures were shipping weapons or nuclear material to shadowy customers. The dominant theory now is that the Arctic Sea had been secretly hauling missiles to either Iran or Syria. Israeli intelligence found out about it and either stopped the delivery themselves, or gave Russia time to intervene. So a secret visit from Netanyahu only fuels that speculation, though the Russian foreign ministry has repeatedly denied that the ship carried anything out of order.

At any rate, the prime minister did disappear from public view for an entire day last week, reported Reuters:

Israeli news media reported that he had toured a facility belonging to the Mossad intelligence agency. But on Wednesday, the newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported that Mr. Netanyahu had instead flown secretly to Moscow to voice concern over the possible sale of Russian antiaircraft missiles to Iran. In Moscow, Russian officials originally said no visit had taken place. But on Thursday, Andrei Nesterenko, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters, “I am not saying yes or no; I am just saying I don’t have any information.” Mr. Netanyahu has not responded directly to the reports of a secret trip.

Russia: Crime and Corruption News

In other international news, Russia issued an extradition warrant for a London-based telecoms tycoon who’s wanted in Moscow on charges of kidnapping and blackmail. Yevgeny Chichvarkin created a successful cell phone retail business in Russia, but ran into problems with the Kremlin over his tax bill after he sold the company. He’s been in the UK for the past nine months, reported the Guardian.

The flamboyant 34-year-old businessman, known for his garish red and yellow boots and a hairstyle that saw him nick-named "the million dollar mullet", is accused of kidnapping an employee of his Evroset company, and of blackmail.
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Moscow has previously demanded the extradition of high-profile critics of the Russian government, including the former Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev. It has been unsuccessful and UK courts have invariably ruled that businessmen who have fallen out with the Kremlin are unlikely to get a fair trial at home.

And in Russia, Ikea has been trying to stand up to Russian corruption in the nearly 10 years the Swedish furniture giant has been operating there, but it looks like the company might be no match for Russian graft after all. The company rented generators rather than pay bribes to get the electricity hooked up when its first store opened in 2000. But the New York Times reports that even that clever move was thwarted by Russian graft:

The board of Ikea’s operating company, which is based in the Netherlands, has concluded that the Russian executive hired to manage the generators was taking kickbacks from the rental company to substantially inflate the price of the service. Ikea said that such a fraud could cost it about $196 million over two years.

Ikea canceled the contract and sought redress in Russian civil court. But in rulings over the last two weeks, Ikea has lost another 5 million euros in damages that the judges awarded the generator rental company for breach of contract.

Ikea disclosed the details of its loss to The New York Times last month, saying that it hoped publicity might compel the Russian authorities to investigate.

“We have encountered something here that is outside the scope of what we normally encounter,” Mr. Thordson said, describing the global retailer’s situation in Russia. “I have never experienced anything like this.”

Italy: Mobs Moving to Rome

Italy’s capital is quickly becoming a power center for organized crime groups based mostly in the south of the country . Police in Rome seized €1 billion worth of assets last year, and only the Sicilian capital of Palermo saw more property and other assets seized, according to the anti-mafia group Centro Pio La Torre. Anti-mafia prosecutors have told the Italian press that mobsters are investing in property in high-end Rome neighborhoods. Italian news agency AKI had the story:

"The capital occupying one of the top spots can come as a shock, but that is a symptom of the consolidated transnational investments of the criminal mafia," said the president of the Centro Pio La Torre, Vito Monaco.