The United States Treasury Department raised alarm yesterday about a Belarus bank known as JSC CredexBank which it designated a “primary money-laundering concern,” under the Patriot Act, officials said Tuesday.

The government’s primary concern is the bank’s use of shell companies which are frequently used in money laundering activities.

“Treasury took this action because it has reason to believe that Credex has engaged in high volumes of transactions that are indicative of money laundering on behalf of shell corporations, and has a history of ownership by shell corporations whose own lack of transparency contributes to considerable uncertainty surrounding Credex’s true beneficial ownership,” they said in a news release.

Russia’s unpopular former Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has been appointed the Security Council’s Deputy Secretary. Nurgaliyev, who was interior minister for eight years, was sacked from his position on Monday following a number of police brutality and corruption scandals that drew wide attention in Russia. 

Nurgaliyev was widely criticized for his failure to curb corruption and violence in law enforcement. However, the Head of Russia’s Human Rights Council and presidential adviser Mikhail Fedotov defended Nurgaliyev, saying corruption is inherent in the system.

The mayor of a northern Kosovo municipality has announced that he will cease cooperation with EULEX, the international administrative body that oversees Kosovo,  after it lied to the family of a  controversial Serbian businessman during a raid on the detained man’s house.

Israeli police arrested ten people on Tuesday morning on suspicion that they belong to an international organ trafficking ring. They are also suspected of extortion, tax fraud, and inflicting grievous bodily harm. Among the suspects is one doctor.

The Israeli National Fraud Unit and the Tax Authority began a joint undercover investigation into the ring several months ago. In 2009, several countries contacted Israel to request an investigation into organ trafficking on its territory after the discovery of an organ trafficking victim in Kosovo who implicated Israeli citizens. European authorities investigating the Kosovo “Medicus” organ trafficking case provided the names of Israeli suspects they uncovered.

The Mexican Army arrested Zetas cartel leader Daniel “The Madman” Elizondo, the suspected perpetrator of last week’s mass beheading of 49 people. Elizondo was arrested in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, an army spokesman said.

According to the Mexican authorities, Elizondo ran the Zetas trafficking operations in the northeast town of Cadereyta where the bodies were discovered, Reuters reported. Graffiti depicting symbols of the Zetas were found near the corpses.

A group laundering profits from the trade of South American narcotics has been dismantled by Bulgaria’s anti-organized crime police and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry announced.

Six men have been arrested in the operation, codenamed “The Launderers,” and charged with money laundering.  A total of BGN 2 million (US$ 1.3 million) of their assets has been seized.

The Montenegrin judiciary is not influenced by the mafia, said the Montenegro Minister of Justice Dusko Markovic at a Parliamentary meeting on Thursday in Podgorica. 

“We have measures in place to ensure effective and responsible work of the judiciary” Markovic is quoted in Serbian daily Politika. He added that Montenegro does have problems with organized crime, but that the country has made a significant progress in the fight against it.

A member of Poland’s ruling Civic Platform party received a three year prison sentence Wednesday after a court found her guilty of corruption.

According to the verdict, former legislator Beata Sawicka of the northern town of Hel accepted over 100,000 zlotys (US$ 29,500), a diamond encrusted pen and alcohol in 2007 in exchange for facilitating a real estate deal.  The court said she assisted a company in securing land worth 3 million zlotys (US$ 900,000) in Hel.

Former Mexican law enforcement official Jesus Quinonez pled guilty on Tuesday to charges of participating in a federal racketeering conspiracy. He was convicted at a federal court in California, and could face life in prison. Quinonez was arrested in 2010.

Quinonez admitted to providing confidential law enforcement information to the notorious Tijuana drug cartel between 2009 and 2010. At the time, he was working as the Director of International Liaison for the Baja California Attorney General’s Office. He was the primary contact person in Baja for the US law enforcement agencies, and the highest-ranking of the four Baja law enforcement officers charged in the case.

An international search warrant has been issued for convicted Bulgarian mobsters Angel Hristov and Plamen Galev, the Chief Secretary of Bulgaria's Interior Ministry Kalin Georgiev announced on Tuesday.

Better known as the “Galevi brothers,” the two Bulgarians vanished days after the Bulgarian supreme appellate court sentenced them for organized crime, racketeering and extortion on May 3. Galev was sentenced to four years, and Hristov to five years in jail.