Federal prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) filed charges against 11 Ministry of Defense officials for breaking the law while in the process of destroying surplus weapons and ammunition, according to a report by Serbian TV News program RTRS.
Transnational crime will be one of the five most significant threats to American and global security over the next decade, according to Obama administration intelligence forecasts and the U.S. military. It joins a chilling list which also includes biological weapons, nuclear weapons, cyber warfare and climate change.
Two primary issues concern American military personnel in the arena of transnational crime, as reported by National Defense magazine.
The first is the limited capacity of military forces to combat criminal groups. It’s difficult for the U.S. to take their eyes off state level actors to fight “non-state, non-standard” actors, National Defense reports.
“Our national defense focus and clearly the focus of our Special Operations Command has got to equally be on high-end threats and state competitors of the future,” said Garry Reid, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations.
Though U.S. forces have primarily concerned themselves with the Middle East and Afghanistan, power vacuums throughout Africa and Asia present equally fertile ground for the emergence of new criminal and terrorist organizations.
The second primary concern, according to Arnaud de Borchgrave in a report for the Transnational Threats Project, is the increasing convergence of organized crime and “ideologically-motivated networks.”
“[It’s] fostering a new generation of hybrid threats,” Borchgrave wrote.
Al-Qaida and similar groups will continue to leverage political instability in countries like Libya and Mali. Reid said that “bandits and kidnappers” have set up shop and that kidnapping for ransom to fund terrorist activities is a relatively new, and extremely lucrative, form of criminality.
“Tens of millions of millions of dollars go into their treasure chests,” he said.
The solutions to these challenges aren’t clear-cut, but military officials acknowledge that the presence of special force operatives in remote parts of the world will be necessary. These officials say cooperation with state governments and regional enforcement agencies will be the most effective tool.
Simply handing over the U.S. military’s complicated vehicles and surveillance systems won’t be enough, according to National Defense, which stated: “Once criminal activity is detected, the host nation must have the will and training to curtail it.”
The United States faces other dangers much closer to home. The United States is the world’s primary market for illicit drugs, and enforcement agencies are only able to confiscate roughly one-third of what flows in to the U.S., according to estimates.
General Douglas Fraser told defense reporters earlier this year that in Central and South America (where an estimated 1.2-1.5 million of illegal drugs are produced each year) countering crime is a lot like in Asia and Africa: Technology is effective, but it can only go so far.
“It’s best done through direct cooperation with regional allies and old-fashioned word-of-mouth intelligence gathering,” he said.
Prominent Montenegro businessman Blažo Dedić was charged before the Special Court in Belgrade and taken into custody last weekend after more than two years under investigation for allegedly laundering drug money for suspected fugitive kingpin Darko Šarić.
Police have shut down what is being called “possibly Victoria’s largest-ever drug lab” in two home raids in suburban Melbourne. Police say the labs were set up to produce tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs, Australian media reports.
According to local forensic teams, the labs were so elaborate that they estimated it would take two days to dismantle them.
Seven men, including two Canadians and one Vietnamese national, have been charged with manufacturing and trafficking large quantities of methamphetamine.
'”This is a very well organized international group,” Assistant Crime Commissioner Stephen Fontana told Victoria’s Sky News.
The raids were the result of a joint investigation between the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), The Australian Federal Police (AFP), and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. The Crime Commission’s intervention manager told reporters that tracking money is the most effective tool authorities can use to track down major drug dealers. In Australia, the street value of one kilogram of methamphetamine can be anywhere from $230,000 to $250,000.
ACC executive director Paul Jevtovic said the raids were significant disruptions in the fight against organized crime.
“Not only has the intelligence and subsequent investigative operations dismantled two very dangerous clandestine laboratories operating in Melbourne's residential streets, it has also successfully dismantled an entire organized criminal syndicate from head to toe,” he said.
Local media reported that an ongoing investigation has been initiated with international partners, especially in Vietnam.
The Ukrainian government handed over majority stakes in five lucrative coal plants this year to private companies with close ties to President Viktor Yanukovych's son Oleksandr, according to a report in Forbes Ukraine. Though the stakes were worth about $10 million, these companies took them over at no charge.
Russia has threatened to reduce fishing quotas or completely bar Japan and South Korea from fishing in Russian territorial waters, head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries Andrei Kraini announced at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday. The announcement comes at a time when the amount of illegally caught and traded king crab is on the rise.
Alexander Saveliev, chairman of the Fisheries’ Public Council, told Voice of Russia that he thinks the threat is more an “instrument of emotional influence” than anything else.
“I do not believe things will be carried as far as the removal of quotas,” Saveliev said. “The danger of losing the opportunity to fish in our exclusive economic zone will outweigh the temptation to obtain easy money for criminally caught products.”
Reports from the Japanese Sapporo TV network indicate that in Japan the illegal market is controlled by the organized crime syndicate ‘Yakuza.’ Various groups are allegedly involved in Russia.
Shady competition on the Japanese docks drives down crab prices. It is bought at low cost there and then shipped to North and South Korea.
Crab is also shipped to the United States. Jake Jacobsen is the director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, which represents much of the Bering Sea crab fleet. He told Alaska Public Radio that up to three illegal crabs come to America for every legal one imported. He also said that the treaties in place to limit illegal fishing in Russia aren’t being aggressively enforced.
“The Japanese government and regulatory officials have been fairly complacent with it because they make so much money off of it,” says Jacobsen. “The Japanese crab industry makes a tremendous profit from illegal fishing in Russia.”
A World Wildlife Fund spokesman says quotas are not as important as improving satellite monitoring systems. “[The current system] has certain flaws that fisherman have learned to bypass,” said WWF’s Konstantin Sgurovsky.
If fishing goes unregulated, the Red King Crab could face extinction. An agreement aimed at reducing poaching was signed at an Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in September.
Organized crime and corruption flourished in Bosnia and Herzegovina not only because of the destabilizing effect of the war, but also due to the international community's misguided reform efforts, according to a new study released by an independent analyst based in Sarajevo.
The Croatian Minister of the Interior Ranko Ostojić was caught in an apparent conflict of interest this week after a local news outlet discovered he has been living since 2007 in a Zagreb apartment owned by media tycoon Ninoslav Pavić.
Illegal mining has resulted in 280 violent deaths this year in Colombia’s northern Antioquia Department, according to the CEO of Grand Colombia Gold, a Canadian-based mining company with major projects in Colombia.
Maria Consuelo Araujo, who is a former Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs, told national news outlets that her company has made a major investment in the region, but “nothing has been done” to stanch the activity of criminal bands.
According to Araujo, there are leaflets circulating in the streets warning that “anyone who is not at home after 10 at night will be killed.” Local police indicated that the violence was primarily due to a confrontation between the Rastrojos and Urabeños groups.
The NGO Insight Crime, which tracks organized crime in the Americas, reported last month that approximately 86% of gold in Colombia is mined illegally, and noted that such illegal activity usually leads to violence.
At an international mining conference last week, Colombian Mining Minister Federico Renjifo emphasized the need to tighten control of the nation’s mining industry.
“All we think about is how to consolidate Colombia as a mining country,” Renfijo said.
Renjifo touted the industry’s successes in recent years, but the increase in illegal mining is a headache for the Colombian economy. As the English-language website Colombia Reports puts it, “the Gold Wars have resulted in more than just a loss of money, but blood as well.”
Police made another arrest on Monday as part of the Republica Srpska Ministry of the Interior's "Operation Spring" campaign to combat corruption. A Doboj city sanitation inspector was arrested for allegedly accepting a 200 KM (approximately $US133) bribe in return for not conducting a required inspection.
"Operation Spring" has led to the arrest of four people, including one government official accused of bribery and another accused of abuse of office, according to reports in the Banja Luka newspaper “Serbian Voice.” In August, Srdjan Ljubojevic, a company director for the public forest management enterprise Šuma Srpske, was arrested for alleged accepting bribes worth 10,000 KM (approximately $US6,670) even as he failed to pay workers' salaries, according to multiple local media reports.