Canadian authorities claim to have uncovered an alleged human smuggling ring which has brought hundreds of Romanian Roma to Toronto via Mexico, Canada’s National Post reports.  A spike in Romanian refugee claimants is suspected to be directly linked.

The smugglers are reportedly charging $10,000 - $30,000 for passage, and those using the pipeline are repaying them by “applying for welfare benefits and engaging in low-level organized crime,” according to the National Post’s sources.

In September, 34 Romanian Roma were arrested east of Toronto by the Durham Regional Police Department during a crackdown which officials characterized as the dismantling of an “organized crime ring.” Durham police posted a video taken from security cameras, which shows distraction-style tactics used during robberies at jewelers and convenience stores.

Canadian investigators have calculated that persons identified in their investigation have received over $2 million from social support programs since January. They also identified more than $1 million in “suspicious wire transfers” shipped overseas.

Police spokespeople confirmed that at least some of the suspects were in Canada illegally.

The Roma – known historically as “Gypsies” – make up 3.2 percent of the population in Romania, where they are the victims of rampant discrimination and hostility.

“The poverty in Romania for the Roma community is crazy,” Gina Csanyi-Robah, executive director of the Roma Community Centre in Toronto, told the Post. “It’s like sub-Saharan Africa in a European country. There’s almost complete exclusion of Roma from employment.”

Csanyi-Robah says that it doesn’t take much prodding for Roma to leave Romania, but she’s skeptical of the smuggling allegations.

The discovery of the alleged network comes as Canada is trying to deal with a surge in refugee claims from Eastern Europe. New regulations which will likely take effect before the end of the year are designed to streamline the deportation process. Unfounded asylum claims will be processed in as few as 45 days, according to Canadian Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney.

OCCRP reporter Khadija Ismayilova was awarded the International Women's Media Foundation's 2012 Courage in Journalism award Wednesday for her work in Azerbaijan.

In an ongoing five-part series, the Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University weighs the pros and cons of the United States Government's Kingpin Strategy, a policy approach which tackles drug trafficking by targeting the criminals themselves, not the crimes.

The strategy initially targeted cocaine trafficking organizations operating out of Medellin and Cali, Colombia, with most of the focus placed on the Cali cartel, writes the Baker Institute's drug fellow Gary Hale.  It was developed after reviewing the “drug trafficking business cycle” which Hale says closely resembles any other commercial enterprise. The DEA and other enforcement groups recognized that the common thread was the “command-and-control elements” that provided leadership, authority, management, and direction for criminal activities.

In Colombia, writes Hales, the strategy focused on the destruction of the cartels “not for the purpose of stopping drug exports but rather, for the purpose of self-preservation, since the cartels were intent on destroying the government.”

In Mexico, President Calderón received criticism for his kingpin elimination efforts. Opponents argued that arresting or killing cartel chieftains left leadership voids, fracturing the cartels and causing an uptick in violence.  Calderón responded that removing kingpins does not increase the violence in states that are already among the most dangerous in Mexico.

The recent death of Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of Mexico’s violent Zetas cartel, was seen as a significant victory for Calderón, who has made the elimination of top cartel leaders a priority in his fight against organized crime.

Hale concludes by saying the Kingpin strategy has proven to be effective, but must be employed in conjunction with other government action. “When coupled with rule-of-law reforms and other law enforcement and intelligence institution building efforts, governments have a better chance of successfully confronting the criminality that affects national and regional security issues,” he writes.

A recently published secret police report in France has revealed that heroin trafficking in the northeast of the country is controlled by Turkish criminal groups, the daily Le Figaro has reported. 

The report, published by the Department of Intelligence and Analysis on Organized Crime (Sirasco) commissioner Dimitri Zoulas, shows that foreign syndicates have increased in France.

Turkish groups reportedly collaborate with traffickers in a number of cities to transport and distribute goods imported from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The French Interior Ministry has recently decided to increase security measures on the issue. France consumes about €2 billion per year in illicit drugs.

Many of the criminal groups with whom the Turks collaborate are comprised largely of Albanian immigrants.

The police report, in fact, comes just one week after a major drug bust which resulted in the arrest of 42 people, almost all of them ethnic Albanians. The raid was the culmination of two years of investigating an Albanian heroin smuggling ring, Le Figaro and others reported.

The Albanian presence as traffickers in France and Western Europe is thought to date back to the 1990s. New York University professor of global affairs Mark Galeotti estimates that Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Greece have absorbed 300,000 illegal Albanian immigrants since 1991.

Furthermore, he writes, upwards of 70 percent of heroin trafficked in Europe is now thought to be Albanian, managed in “close collaboration with Turkish groups and, to a further extent, with the opium producers in Central Asia and Afghanistan.”

In one of the largest seizures in history, Hong Kong customs authorities intercepted more than four tons of illegal ivory smuggled from Africa, the city's Customs and Excise Department announced Saturday. 

Two containers arrived from Tanzania and Kenya and purported to carry "plastic scrap" and roscoco beans. Instead, they held 1,209 elephant tusks and another 1.4 kilograms of ivory ornaments, at an estimated value of about US $3.5 million. The cargo represented the equivalent of 600 dead elephants, according to an IHT report Monday.

Ivory considered a conflict resource, and is being used more and more to finance conflicts across Africa, the New York Times reported last month. "Africa is in the midst of an epic elephant slaughter," that article said, "with the underground ivory trade becoming increasingly militarized." Conservation groups say poachers kill tens of thousands of elephants die a year.

Meanwhile, macroeconomics in Asia have helped spur the ivory trade. Increased wealth there has brought increased demand for the high-end goods produced in the wildlife trade.

The recent seizures in China were facilitated by a partnership between Hong Kong and Guangdong province. According to a press release, smuggling carries a maximum punishment of a US $640,000 fine and seven years in prison.. Seven people have been arrested in connection with this operation, according to local media reports.

In an effort to combat exorbitant money laundering in Mexico, President Felipe Calderon has signed into law a ban on large cash transactions, the AP reports. The ban is intended to curb laundering practices which some experts estimate amount to $10 billion per year in Mexico.

The bill forbids buyers and sellers from making or accepting cash payments of more than a half million pesos ($38,750) for real-estate purchases. It also forbids cash payments of more than 200,000 pesos ($15,500) for automobiles or items like jewelry and lottery tickets.

AP reports that small businesses, retailers and certainly gangsters have long conducted many of their transactions in cash, so the legislation has been particularly sensitive. As such, the law took two years to move through Congress. It will go into effect in about 90 days.

Having survived the global recession and entered a period of fiscal growth, the Baltic country of Latvia is now widely considered an economic success story. 

But an investigation by OCCRP partner Re:Baltica found that the country in fact has the highest income inequality rate in the European Union, and some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates as well.

Latvia's radical wealth disparity is perpetrated by unjust social policies, Re:Baltica's report found. The government spends more than most European countries on supporting children from middle- and high-income families, but less than almost any other EU country on social benefits that target the poor, according to the World Bank.

And recent austerity measures have deepened this income divide, as they have most heavily burdened the poor, according to IMF and World Bank reports.

As a result, one out of five people in Latvia is poor, living on a monthly household income of €215 or less, Re:Baltica found; last year, 100,000 Latvians lived on less than €65 a month.

Re:Baltica's report details the negotiations that led to Latvia's current policies, profiles the families suffering under them, and outlines the financial fixes being proposed by experts.

The Latin American Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) has become the first street gang to be designated as a transnational criminal organization by U.S. authorities, Government Security News reports. MS-13 now joins the ranks of the Yakuza and Los Zetas on the government’s list of groups targeted for domestic economic sanctions.

The designation is not only a label, however. It’s also a tool; it allows U.S. law enforcement agencies to target and freeze the financial assets of the group’s members within U.S. jurisdictions.

"This designation allows us to strike at the financial heart of MS-13 and is a powerful weapon in our fight to dismantle one of the most violent, transnational criminal organizations operating today," said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) director John Morton, in a statement. "History has proven that we can successfully take down organized crime groups when we combine sophisticated investigative techniques with tough street level enforcement, cutting off cash flows, contraband and collaborators to ensure they no longer find safe haven in our communities."

Since 2006, authorities have arrested 4,078 MS-13 gang members. Over the same span, the U.S. Department of Justice has successfully brought to indictment MS-13 racketeering investigations in Washington, D.C., Virginia, New York, San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta.

The MS-13 criminal operations are extensive. According to the department of Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), members have been involved in drug trafficking, human smuggling and sex trafficking, murder and violence, racketeering, and immigration offenses. Members number at least 30,000 and are present in at least five countries, including the U.S.

The MS-13 creed is exemplified by one of its mottos, "mata, roba, viola, controla," which translates to "kill, steal, rape, control.”

The HSI National Gang Unit will take the law enforcement lead, GSN reports, under an anti-MS-13 enforcement effort called, "Operation Barbed Wire." The primary task will be removing violent gang members from neighborhoods and, when appropriate, from the country.

The leader of Mexico's Zetas drug cartel, Heriberto Lazcano, was killed Sunday by Mexican soldiers in a gunfight outside of a baseball stadium, the Mexican navy reported Tuesday.

Organized crime and corruption are the biggest obstacles facing Western Balkan countries that seek EU membership, the European Commission (EC) said in its latest European Union enlargement strategy report, released Wednesday.

And the two obstacles are inextricably linked, the report noted. "The pervasiveness of corruption enables infiltration of organised crime groups into the public and private sector," it reads. "Corruption undermines the rule of law, impacts negatively on the business environment and national budgets and affects citizens’ everyday life in areas such as healthcare and education."

Noting that the recent Euro crisis highlighted national economies' interdependence, the EC's report emphasized that dysfunction caused by organized crime and corruption has far-reaching consequences. "Addressing risks of instability in the Western Balkans is manifestly in our joint interest," it said. "Strengthening stability and democracy in south-east Europe is also an investment in deep and sustainable democracy in the EU’s wider neighbourhood."

And since organized crime is fundamentally an international phenomenon, the EC recognizes that law enforcement must be as well. "The cross border nature of many criminal activities requires strong cooperation between law enforcement and judicial bodies in the region, with EU Member States and internationally," the report said.

Finally, the EC reported that inter-ethnic disputes continue to mar the process of reform in many Eastern European countries, undermining their attempts to achieve EU membership and also affecting the stability of the region as a whole.

The commission also released individualized progressed reports on countries seeking membership. Here are some highlights.

Turkey:

The Commission came down pretty hard on Turkey, which has enjoyed rather gentle treatment in previous reports. Referencing issues regarding freedom of expression, assembly and association, lengthy prosecution and detention periods and political solution to the Kurdish issue, the EC said "concerns are growing regarding Turkey’s lack of substantial progress towards fully meeting the political criteria."

Bosnia and Herzegovina:

"Limited progress has been made towards meeting the political criteria and achieving more functional, coordinated and sustainable institutional structures," the report said. ”The country’s leaders need to demonstrate the political will to reach consensus and to realise with concrete actions the EU aspirations of the country and its citizens."

Albania:

The European Commission recommended that Albania receive official EU candidate status, conditional upon judicial and public administration reforms. For the past two years, Albania has been denied candidacy.  Although some criticize the proposed parliamentary reforms for not going far enough to give a voice to the opposition party, EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle focused on the advantages of EU membership. "Candidacy will be a victory for the government, for opposition, for all Albanians," he said in a press conference on Wednesday.

Kosovo:

A feasibility study concluded that Kosovo can more forward with its path to candidacy despite the fact that EU member states disagree about its status. However, the EC did warn that Kosovo and Serbia must imporove relations or risk blocking each other in efforts to achieve candidacy.

Serbia:

Serbia became a candidate in March 2012, but in order to achieve membership, it needs to improve relations with Kosovo and reinvigorate reforms, the Commission said. Serbia needs "to pay particular attention to the rule of law, notably the judiciary where recent setbacks underline the need for renewed commitment to pursue reforms," the Enlargement report said.

Macedonia:

Macedonia began accession talks in March 2012, and according to the report the government is making progress addressing key issues, which include freedom of expression, rule of law and ethnic relations, challenges for electoral reform, public administration reform, and strengthening of the market economy.

Montenegro:

Montenegro began accession negotiations in June 2012, but, the EC says, it "needs to invest more effort to further develop a track record in the area of rule of law with the aim of irreversible reform implementation, in particular with respect to organised crime and corruption cases, including at high level."

Croatia:

Croatia is set to become an EU member state in July 2013, but has a list of reforms to deliver on before then. Those include strengthening the judicial sector and further privatizing industry.