Mexican marines have arrested Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, the son of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
El Chapo is the alleged leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. His 26-year-old son was arrested in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, authorities announced Thursday.
The National Bank of Serbia has stepped in to monitor Universal Bank’s daily operations, National Bank Governor Dejan Soskic, told the Serbian news agency Beta.
Soskic did not give a precise reason for the action but said “Individuals can’t be above the interests of the country, and about that, there can be no compromise.”
The 2012 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, published Tuesday by the US State Department shows that many countries around the world are not doing enough to stop human trafficking and protect victims.
The yearly TIP report draws on data collected with the help of American embassies, aid groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and individuals around the world. It examines the scope of trafficking and what governments are doing about modern day slavery.
Bosko Raicevic, the cousin of Andrija Draskovic, a Serbian businessman with ties to organized crime, was killed around noon Friday in old town Belgrade when an unidentified assailant threw an explosive through the window of the car Raicevic was driving, Blic news reported.
Witnesses reported hearing four explosions in the car. The explosion, which occurred at a major crossroads near the Belgrade Zoo, shattered the windows of nearby buildings, and Blic reports that it took firemen over fifteen minutes to out the fire in Raicevic’s car.
Organized crime in Sweden has found a new way to work around regulations, and is raking in millions through tobacco tax fraud. According to the Helsingborg Dagblad newspaper (HD), between 2009 and 2011 12 cigarette import companies robbed the state of €64 million (US$81.3 million) in tobacco taxes. Tax fraud is increasingly replacing conventional cigarette smuggling.
Frecor Tobacco Import AB and Asgari Import & Export AB, two companies in Helsingborg, southern Sweden, robbed the state of SEK141 million (US$20.3 million) in taxes, the newspaper reported. Both firms have since gone bankrupt and their respective registered owners, Bernt Eriksson and Fadi Haidar Ahmad, are on the run. Eriksson was last seen in Thailand in 2010, and Ahmad is believed to be hiding in the Middle East.
Romania’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling today that sentenced former Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to two years in jail on corruption charges. The occasion marks the first time a high profile Romanian politician will serve time in prison since the fall of communism.
According to a study by the Bulgarian National Center Business to the Rules, an informal or “gray” economy accounts for nearly a third of the goods and services produced in Bulgaria and Romania. The two have the largest gray economies in the European Union (EU). The study was done as a part of a Restriction and Prevention of Informal Economy project funded by the EU.
An indictment in a high profile corruption case has been reversed on judicial technicalities raising further questions about whether the Bulgarian justice system is working.
The former CEO of Sofia’s central heating company Toplofikazia, Valentin Dimitrov, was acquitted of charges of large-scale embezzlement on Friday by the Sofia Appellate Court. The new ruling revoked Dimitrov’s 2009 sentence for embezzling BGN6 million (US$3.87) from Toplofikazia.
Dimitrov was was originally sentenced to 14 years in prison, and all of his assets were to be confiscated. His sentence was revoked on technicalities because a panel of judges found irregularities in his first trial. This is the second time Dimitrov has had an indictment thrown out.
Nine members of an international human trafficking network were arrested on Tuesday, Europol announced. Law enforcement and judicial authorities of Bulgaria, Belgium, France and Poland conducted a joint operation coordinated by Europol and the European Union’s Judicial Cooperation Unit (Eurojust).
The network was trafficking young Bulgarian women who were taken to countries of the European Union, including Belgium and France, for sexual exploitation. Members of the trafficking network collected the money earned by forced prostitution and transferred it to Bulgaria through Western Union for investment purposes.
Montenegro’s accession to the European Union, presumed to begin this June, will not come without a significant “but,” Dirk Lange, the head of the Montenegro Department in the Directorate General for Enlargement, said yesterday in the capital Podgorica. Radio Free Europe reports that the Montenegrin public has taken Lange’s statement as “a cold shower.”
Lange told old Duško Marković, Deputy Prime Minister as well as Justice and Human Rights Minister, that a positive recommendation from the European Commission for accession does not mean that the European Council will automatically approve the small Balkan country’s membership.