Bosnian authorities have arrested three Balkan men and charged them with trafficking drugs intended for Europe. The State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) in Sarajevo, acting on leads from citizens, arrested three members of an international organized crime group and seized 12 kilograms of marijuana. One of the suspects is a Bosnian citizen, while the other two are Serbian nationals. A Serbian suspect was previously sentenced to ten years in prison in the Czech Republic, on charges of drug trafficking.

The speaker for Kyrgyzstan’s Parliament Akhmatbek Keldibekov has stepped down, facing pressure from rivals investigating his links to organized crime and corruption in the country.

Keldibekov announced his resignation Monday after a string of talks with parliamentarians that went on late into the night.  His departure will facilitate the formation of a new coalition government.

Keldibekov said he would step down on Dec. 14 “in connection with the reformation of the majority coalition and in order to preserve stability.”

The speaker is one of the most powerful members of the Ata Zhurt party, a nationalist party which won the most parliamentary seats in the October elections.  The party largely supports ousted former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, which is why removing Keldibikov was considered the first major political challenge for the recently-elected president Almazbek Atambayev.

One thousand of Keldibekov’s supporters gathered in the southern city of Osh to show their support for the ousted speaker.  Osh was the base of the ethnic violence that killed hundreds in June 2010 after former president Bakiyev was forced to flee.  Smaller groups also rallied to show support in the capital city of Bishkek.

After the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator that ruled over Egypt for 30 Years, the new Cairo governments are trying to recover the billions that were illegally stashed abroad by the former regime's cronies. Hussein Salem was once one of the most powerful men in Egypt and was considered to be Mubarak's right hand. A former intelligence officer and the "father" of Sharm El Sheikh, Salem is now in custody in Spain together with his daughter Magda and son Khaled. All three of them are charged with bribing Mubarak and his family, with squandering public funds and with money laundering.

RISE PROJECT Romania followed Hussein's money in the Eastern European country. Salem and both his children built a luxury shopping mall in the outskirts of Bucharest and were involved in other businesses as well. The Salem family made its entry in the Romanian market through a British Virgin Islands company that was used as a financial vehicle in other countries as well.

The average bribe paid in Tajikistan is about more than 1,000 somoni, or US$200, an amount 2.8 times the average monthly salary, according to a new report on corruption released by the Presidential Centre for Strategic Research.

Anti-corruption expert Aleksandras Dobryninas, who advised on the survey, said the results of the survey make clear that corruption is a major obstacle preventing the poor from access to public services like education or healthcare.

“Corruption is the cause of poverty rather than poverty being conducive to corruption,” he said at the presentation of the report in the Dushanbe..

An investigation by Albanian journalist Gjergj Thanasi has revealed serious security breaches with Albania’s new biometric passport system. Biometric ID cards and passports are now a requirement for Albanians wishing to travel to European Union countries without visa restrictions. They contain unique information about the holder, such as fingerprints and information about the individual’s physical characteristics. The passports are considered harder to falsify than traditional identification documents.

As Thanasi notes in his report, the only way to falsify biometric passports is for corrupt authorities to enter bad information. That appears to be happening, Thanasi’s report shows. Since the introduction of biometric passports in Albania in May 2009, the Albanian emigration police and the border authorities of several European countries detected numerous cases of biometric passports with “borrowed” identities. These falsified passports were detected through random fingerprint checks on European borders.

An investigation by Albanian journalist Gjergj Thanasi has revealed serious security breaches with Albania’s new biometric passport system. Biometric ID cards and passports are now a requirement for Albanians wishing to travel to European Union countries without visa restrictions. They contain unique information about the holder, such as fingerprints and information about the individual’s physical characteristics. The passports are considered harder to falsify than traditional identification documents.

As Thanasi notes in his report, the only way to falsify biometric passports is for corrupt authorities to enter bad information. That appears to be happening, Thanasi’s report shows. Since the introduction of biometric passports in Albania in May 2009, the Albanian emigration police and the border authorities of several European countries detected numerous cases of biometric passports with “borrowed” identities. These falsified passports were detected through random fingerprint checks on European borders.

During a session of the security sub-committee of the Albanian Parliament, the Director General of the Albanian General Register Office Armand Teliti said that the Albanian authorities have so far detected over 500 biometric passports with identity information stolen from other Albanian citizens.

So far, only a few owners of falsified passports have been arrested to date, as well as a small number of civil servants in remote Albanian villages, and several employees of the Aleat-Safran company, which was contracted to make the passports. The defendants received short prison sentences and had to pay fines..

After losing elections last week, Croatia’s ruling party HDZ took another blow when the party and former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, were indicted for graft in connection with operating slush funds for their own election campaigns.

The indictment, the third against Sanader, came just days before Croatia signed an accession treaty with the European Union (EU).   Prosecution of organized crime and corruption were considered fundamental to its EU bid, and the 27 members of the economic alliance say they will continue to monitor anti-corruption trials from Brussels until Croatia officially enters the EU in July 2013.

This is the first time the country has indicted an entire political party.  Ironically, Croatia’s state-wide anti-corruption campaign was started by Sanader’s successor the premiership, Jadranka Kosor.

The indictment comes five days after HDZ, which had been the ruling party for eight years, lost parliamentary elections to a center-left coalition known as the “Kukuriku” bloc.  Most analysts say the loss is a direct result of perceived corruption and a flailing economy.

Sanader and six subordinates allegedly colluded to illegally skim funding from nine public companies for an election ‘slush fund.’  Prosecutors at Croatia’s Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime (USKOK), say this went on between 2003 and 2009, when Sanader mysteriously gave up his position as Prime Minister and moved to Austria.

Spanish police, in conjunction with Europol investigators, say they have dismantled a major European crime network of drug traffickers and money counterfeiters operating in 20 countries with the arrest of 25 individuals.

Spanish authorities have been investigating the group since 2010, according to a news release from Interpol.  In June 2011, the Spanish National Police seized 1.018 tons of cannabis and arrested 11 suspects.  Subsequent investigations, which resulted in another 14 arrests, then focused on counterfeiters, who distributed more than €2 million in fake bills in 20 countries.

Undercover agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have been laundering large amounts of money for some of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels. By infiltrating the money laundering operations of the drug gangs, the DEA is hoping to trace money from low ranking traffickers to the top leadership.

Former DEA agents who asked to remain anonymous said that one strategy was to send Mexican agents posing as smugglers to pick up cash from Mexican traffickers. The Mexican agents would be accompanied by US authorities, who would then transport the cash on government flights to the US and deposit it into trafficker’s accounts. The money would afterwards be wired to companies working for the cartel. Alternatively, undercover DEA agents would collect money from drug dealers in the US, and transfer it to Mexico.

In 2010, the DEA seized around US$1 billion in cash and drugs, while Mexico seized some US$26 million in laundered money. These seizures are only a small fraction of the estimated US$18 to US$39 billion in drug money that annually crosses the US-Mexico border. Former DEA officials said that the agency tries to seize as much money as it launders, by charging the traffickers service fees, as well as through arrests at pickup points for the drug money.

While critics concede that the DEA has gained valuable information about the Mexican drug business, doubts remain about the effectiveness of the methods. One concern is that the DEA’s operation might be facilitating crime more than it serves to dismantle it. Cartels are able to continue operating for months or even years before arrests.

Brothers Bruno and Saimir Krasniqi, leaders of a ethnic-Albanian organized crime network, were convicted Wednesday in the Southern District of New York of an array of charges. They included kidnapping, murder, extortion, racketeering, narcotics trafficking, arson, larceny, possession and use of firearms, obstruction of justice, and transporting stolen narcotics across state lines.

“Bruno and Saimir Krasniqi led one of the most brutal and violent organized crime groups in recent memory,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a news conference at the culmination of the five-week trial.

“In one six-month period, they committed two murders, two kidnappings, two drug robberies, and an arson. Today, nearly six years after the brutal murders they orchestrated, the jury’s swift verdict has brought the Krasniqis’ reign of terror to an end and the perpetrators of these vicious crimes to justice.”