Fatic doesn’t say how Serbian crime groups are able to offer their customers such low drug prices. Is it because Serbian criminals are like the Wal-Mart of heroin, ordering in such bulk that they can pass on their savings to the junkies? Or have they cut out the middlemen, the way the Italian ‘Ndrangheta has done with the cocaine trade? The recent South American adventures of the Serbian security services and police – an October bust in Uruguay that found two tons of cocaine destined for Montenegro, and last week’s seizure of nearly 500 kilos of coke from a house in Buenos Aires – might suggest that some of the bulk-orders/no-middlemen stuff is going on in the cocaine trade, at least.
A smooth operation
Fatic didn’t elaborate on why the prices might be so low. He did talk about the fluid structure of Serbian organized crime and how it meshes with the state itself:
Fatic said there were five major mafia clans operating in Serbia with up to 10,000 'foot soldiers'.
The groups are organised as networks, rather than hierarchical structures, so they can expand according to the needs of the market or shrink if there is intense police scrutiny, he said.
"This means that there is no such thing as a constant number of group members, as they drift in and out," he said.
"Most maintain independent criminal careers and are involved in large cocaine trafficking 'projects', some are legitimate business people."
…
He warned that the mafia involved large groups that were connected with corrupt local and national authorities and corrupt parts of the state apparatus which did not hesitate to use extreme violence.
Meanwhile, Serbian authorities said Argentine police arrested five people from Serbia and Montenegro when they raided the Buenos Aires cocaine house last week. Those arrested are believed to be connected with October’s Uruguay bust, when police found more than two tons of cocaine on a yacht registered to a Croatian citizen.
Also last week, Serbia’s Supreme Court confirmed the guilty verdicts for the two men convicted of murdering Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003. No further appeals are allowed for Milorad Ulemek, who was convicted of organizing the assassination, or for Zvezdan Jovanovic, who was convicted of firing the bullet that killed Djindjic. Both were sentenced to 40 years.
And as of next month, Serbian passport holders won’t need visas to enter the Schengen Area. EU interior and justice ministers decided Monday to offer citizens of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia visa-free travel as of Dec. 19. The ministers reckoned the countries had met the benchmarks on customs, border services and organized crime.
Other regional news
Montenegrin police last week arrested 17 people, including three policemen and a customs official, on suspicion that they’re involved in a stolen-car smuggling ring. Police believe that those arrested are part of an organized group that specializes in smuggling stolen cars and forging documents.
Europe’s match-fixing scandal continues
The investigation into the Europe-wide football match-fixing scandal that broke in November has widened from mere gamblers to referees and to an official associated with UEFA – European football’s governing body. UEFA is investigating whether three referees and a UEFA official were involved in the match-rigging, which the group reckons is the biggest-ever scandal of its kind in European football. The New York Times reported:
After a meeting at its headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, with officials of soccer associations from nine countries involved in the case, UEFA said it suspected five clubs, all in Eastern Europe, of involvement in efforts to manipulate games. UEFA said it had questions about seven matches under its jurisdiction, including one in the Champions League, the cross-border competition for elite European clubs.
Describing match fixing as “a cancer we need to stamp out,” Gianni Infantino, the UEFA general secretary, said, “We don’t know if this is the end of the story.”
Indeed, the police in Germany are investigating about 200 matches across the nine countries, including three Champions League games. Last week 17 people — 15 in Germany and 2 in Switzerland — were arrested in connection with the case. At least one other suspect has since been detained.
Prosecutors in Bochum, Germany, have provided no names, and they have disclosed only general information about the alleged plot, saying criminals conspired to make millions of euros through bets on matches in which they had bribed players, coaches and other officials.
The match-fixing group worked like an organized crime group, German lawyer Burkhard Benecken told DPA:
Citing documents from the prosecution office in Bochum which is investigating the affair, Benecken said that team doctors and chefs of luxury hotels were approached and asked to poison certain players.
He also said that people were intimidated by being locked into cellars, and added that this use of force has led investigators to treat the issue as organized crime.
Rusal listing uncertain
The listing of billionaire Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum giant Rusal on the Hong Kong stock exchange was still up in the air as of this writing, apparently because those who head the exchange – known as HKEx – would like the HKEx to improve its reputation about the transparency of companies it lists. And they have some concerns about Deripaska, namely that he’s alleged to have ties to organized crime. Those same concerns have led to Deripaska’s ban on US travel (which was lifted at least twice in the past year thanks to the FBI). Deripaska has never been charged with or convicted of a crime, and he denies any ties to crime groups. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, even those hints of crime connections may be enough to tarnish Deripaska and his company in Hong Kong.
Sensitivities regarding Mr. Deripaska may be a source of concern to HKEx's listing committee, an independent board of lawyers, accountants, investors and shareholder-rights activists that is responsible for vetting the applications and that could be a wild card. In recent months, some members of the listing committee have pushed for tougher corporate-governance reforms on listing matters, and the committee has been a locus of attention during a series of recent regulatory tugs-of-war this year.
The global economic crisis has reportedly left Rusal with a $14 billion debt; Deripaska is attempting to raise capital with a $2.5 billion initial public offering.
Afghanistan struggles
With all the news in the US media lately about corruption in Afghanistan (made timely by the relatively recent fraudulent election and the recent US presidential decision on how to handle the war there), the question posed by Reuters is a good one. The agency asks, is corruption in Afghanistan too deep to root out? Several Afghans detailed their bribery stories to the reporter, with one man summing it up:
"The infrastructure of this country is based on corruption. If you get rid of it, the whole country will fall down," Abdullah said. "All ministers are corrupt and they should be hanged."
And in statements that would be familiar to anyone who knows anything about foreign engagement in Bosnia and Kosovo, a former Afghan counter-narcotics minister said the West turned a blind eye to corruption in favor of stability and so they might have someone local with whom to work. But Habibullah Qaderi told the Canadian Press that those same people have turned into a real problem in recent years:
In a wide-ranging interview in his Toronto office, Qaderi took aim at the malignant corruption he said infected the government and metastasized throughout the insurgency-racked country. His best efforts to draw attention to the problem were stymied, he said, both internally and by the international community.
In some cases, he said, international intelligence agencies such as the CIA persisted in supporting officials they knew to be dishonest because it served their own purposes.
Those agents are "thriving" under the protection of foreign services, he said.
