Illegal logging is on the rise, as organized crime groups develop more advanced systems of stealing or forging permits, concealing criminal activities, and even “laundering timber,” according to a new report.

Cocaine trafficking and associated violence are still the chief criminal issues affecting Central America, according to a new UNODC threat assessment. But because of the increasingly inhospitable drug environment in Mexico, thanks to a crackdown that began in 2006, traffickers have shifted their focus to new routes along the Guatemala/Honduras border, the assessment said. Displacement to the Caribbean is also a threat.

The Government of Montenegro revoked the gambling permit for a casino hotel owned by fugitive businessman and Darko Saric associate Rodoljub Radulovic.

Hermitage Capital Management, the investment fund that employed lawyer

Sergei Magnitsky before he was beaten to death in a Russian prison in
2009, announced this week that it has filed criminal complaints in
eight foreign jurisdictions against the Russian government.

To demonstrate systemic fraud perpetrated by Russian officials, the
complaints filed by Hermitage Capital use evidence uncovered by
journalists at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
(OCCRP) and at the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. During two years
of investigation, those reporters tracked down $135 million of the
$230 million stolen from Hermitage Capital by the Russian government
in the form of fraudulent tax manipulations in 2006.

The money was traced through a complex laundering operation and found
to have ended up paying for multi-million dollar properties in Dubai
for Russian oligarchs and officials at a Moscow Tax Office.

Hermitage used those forensic records to file complaints in Austria,
Switzerland, Finland, Cyprus, Hong Kong and three Baltic republics.
The complaints alert officials to the stolen funds, ask for the

relevant accounts to be frozen, and request that criminal investigations 
be opened.

It's too soon to tell whether these jurisdictions will do so, and the Russian government has not responded to the charges. But one Latvian bank implicated in the charges has said it will "check the facts," according to a local media report.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament has made the first steps toward introducing visa sanctions against the Russian officials believed to be involved in Magnitsky's death.

The British High Court has handed down a ruling in a protracted financial dispute between two of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs – it was the largest private litigation battle in history. Roman Abramovich was declared the winner on August 31 after he denied claims that he’d cheated former oil partner Boris Berezovsky out of billions of dollars.

Elvis Kelmendi, son of alleged Albanian mafia boss Naser Kelmendi, was arrested Saturday on an international warrant issued by Interpol in Bosnia Herzegovina, according to local media reports. Those reports say he is charged with attempted murder and other offenses.

Twenty-three people are dead and dozens in critical condition in the Czech Republic after consuming tainted homemade alcohol, according to local media reports.

The victims are believed to have suffered methanol poisoning after drinking bootleg liquor mixed with methyl alcohol to stretch the supply, then disguised and sold in brand-name bottles.

Police have charged more than 30 people suspected of being involved in the deadly trade, according to Pavla Holcova, OCCRP’s reporter in Czech Republic. The Economist reported that despite the arrests and the discovery of a garage full of methanol-laced bottles in the south-eastern city of Zlin, authorities believe they have yet to track down any high-level operatives in the scheme.

The Czech government banned the sale of hard liquor in the entire country on Sept. 14 in an apparent attempt to curb the epidemic, and banned all liquor exports the following Thursday, according to the government’s press releases. Russia, Slovakia, and Poland have all banned Czech alcohol imports in the days since.

The ban on experts is expected to be lifted by the end of the month, especially since the Czech government counts on nearly $40 million per month it makes on alcohol exports.

In the meantime, Czech drinkers can rely on the homemade plum brandy made in small local distilleries there, which were not included in the ban., according to an Associated Press report.

The Russian parliament unanimously approved a bill that would widen the definition of treason, a move many see as another Kremlin attempt to quash dissent, AP reports.

Customs officials confiscated  more than 100,000KM worth of illegal gold this week when they interrupted an attempt to smuggle jewelry across the Pavlovica bridge border crossing, the Indirect Taxation Authority said on Monday.

Two Serbian citizens coming from Sabac were bringing some 328 pieces of jewelry across the border into Bosnia Herzegovina in a Mercedes S-Class 320 TDI when officials performed a detailed inspection and found the watches, necklaces, and bracelets hidden in the car.

Both passengers pleaded guilty to customs offenses and paid 20,000 KM in fines.

According to the ITA, this stash likely represents a tiny portion of the gold smuggled into BiH each year. They suspect a larger influx because customs records and jewelery stores' inventories are conspicuously mismatched.

In 2011, 6 million KM worth of gold was legally imported into the country, and the first half of 2012 saw 2.7 million KM worth, according to Ratko Kovacevic, a spokesperson for the ITA.

“Compared to the number of jeweller’s shops in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we find this quantity of the imported gold and gold jewelry too small,“ Kovacevic said Friday.

In an impassioned call-to-arms this week, Dutch MEP Emine Bozkurt presented her position paper to Parliament on match-fixing in European sport. She called match-fixing a serious problem and proposed an immediate course of action, “before the integrity of sport is ruined.”

Bozkurt  foundthat match-fixing is an especially dangerous crime because of its high revenues and “excessively low” sentences and detection rates. Thus, she argued, it’s entangled in much larger, more sinister, criminal webs: Organizations are using match-fixing to launder money from drug and human trafficking, her paper asserted.

Though she gave no specific examples, Bozkurt said that the link between football and crime was especially strong in Eastern Europe and the Balkans .

Indeed, Bozkurt’s paper comes just weeks after a chilling BBC investigation uncovered deep criminal ties in Bulgaria’s football clubs. OCCRP also looked at these ties in its series “Game of Control” published in 2010.  In  it, OCCRP profiled a Macedonian match fixer who explained how matches were fixed.

“No fewer than 15 football club bosses have been murdered in Bulgaria’s top football league in the last decade alone,” said reporter Margot Dunne in a BBC Crossing Continents episode related to the investigation.

In her paper, Bozkurt was adamant that this corruption is systemic, and said  that no one entity could hope to stem the tide on its own. She provided a few specific solutions for governments and stakeholders.

For sports organizations themselves, Bozkurt recommended a zero-tolerance policy on internal and external corruption, and a system for scrutinizing sub-contracting companies involved in the scheduling of “friendly matches.”

She further recommended the creation of a specialized unit to combat match-fixing. This unit would be advised of all irregular gambling patterns and would cooperate with betting operators and sports organizations to investigate and prosecute violations.