Bulgaria Gets Israeli Help on OC

Israel’s former inspector-general has gone to Bulgaria to hear about the problems facing that country’s police, reported Ha’aretz.

Bulgaria invited Assaf Hefetz to Sofia on a three-day visit; the Israeli might end up a consultant on upgrading the Bulgarian police force with a focus on organized crime.

Noting that this trip is just an initial visit, Hefetz said the fact the Bulgarian government invited him to the country was itself significant.

"In principle, we're talking about initial feelers ahead of more in-depth consultation," he said. "I received the invitation and I am going for three days to study the Bulgarian police, to study the experience and conditions in which the police operate there and to identify the problems the police officers there cope with."

He said he ultimately plans to send his recommendations to the Bulgarian government.

Hefetz is considered a world-renowned expert on fighting terrorism and organized crime. He founded and headed the Israel Police's terror-fighting unit. He said that in Bulgaria he expected to focus on improving the existing police force and working on crime-fighting legislation, since the country does not currently have a defined plan for establishing new professional police units.

Bulgaria was in the news again last week, not for European Union leaders slamming Bulgaria’s organized crime and corruption record, but for Bulgarians protesting against their government for that record. Wednesday’s protests, which demanded the government step down for its failure to get rid of corruption and crime, turned into a small riot. Some protestors were injured. As if to prove the point, two suspects in one of Bulgaria’s more than 150 unsolved contract-style shootings walked free the same day. The two men had been arrested for the killing of Georgi Stoev, the author of nine Bulgarian crime books, who was shot in the head in front of a busy Sofia hotel in broad daylight last April. The Sofia prosecutor told the media the men were released because no eyewitnesses could positively identify them.

In other unrest involving Bulgarians, two were killed and three were injured when Bulgarian and Colombian mobs clashed last week in Madrid over control of some of the city’s nightclubs.

Serbia to Seize Criminal Assets

The Serbian government seems to be making good on its promise last year that it would make seizing criminals’ assets a reality. Government coffers will be open for seized assets in March, Justice Minister Snezana Malovic said last week. Malovic also noted that her ministry has established an office to manage the asset seizures with an annual budget of 160 million Serbian dinars (US$2.22 million).

Serbia’s interior ministry is also putting the finishing touches on a catalogue of organized crime, which the interior minister says will help put the police in the best possible position to fight organized crime. Officials say once the so-called “white book” is finished, it will not be published and will remain confidential. One lawyer told B92 that the book’s information will help police monitor the people listed and their contacts. Other experts said having such a list will do little to make inroads against organized crime.

In neighboring Croatia, anti-corruption body USKOK is investigating former national health insurance head Veceslav Bergman, reported the state news agency. USKOK is asking the tax authority for reports on Bergman’s assets, as well as those of his wife and members of his immediate family, to look into reports that Bergman obtained around €1 million in assets during his four-year term. Croatia’s head prosecutor told the press that embezzlement charges were being prepared for various people associated with the national health insurance but did not elaborate.

Tajikistan: Talco Case Charges Dropped

Charges against two Tajiks accused of using a state-owned aluminium plant, Talco, as their personal cash cow have been dropped, thus bringing an end to one of the most expensive lawsuits in British history.

Last week’s announcement ends three years of court proceedings against Talco’s former director Abduqodir Ermatov and against Avaz Nazarov, whose company was the main supplier of the plant’s smelter. They were accused of taking some $500 million from the plant between 1996 and 2004. The suit has to date cost $130 million in lawyers’ fees, or 5 percent of Tajikistan’s gross national product.

Talco – owned by Tajik President Emomali Rahmon since 2004 – brought the lawsuit against Nazarov and his UK-based company last year, citing the two men’s corrupt relationship and lavish bribes paid by Nazarov to Ermatov and his family.

The company may have dropped the UK charges, but the story is far from over: The International Monetary Fund last autumn ordered an independent audit of the company, because of Talco’s mismanagement of funds and lack of transparency.

In other Central Asia news, a police major in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city was arrested last week on suspicion of drug dealing. The National Security Ministry is questioning Elsevar Nabiyev after officials found 16 kilos of narcotics in the appropriately-named town of Ganja (its name means “treasure”) and received information that Major Nabiyev was the drug-runners’ boss. The security ministry has been running most of Azerbaijan’s organized crime and drug cases, because it views the interior ministry and the police as too corrupt.

US: OC Prosecutions Down 20 percent

US federal prosecutions of immigration crime may have doubled last fiscal year, according to the New York Times, but that’s at the expense of most other serious crime:

The emphasis, many federal judges and prosecutors say, has siphoned resources from other crimes, eroded morale among federal lawyers and overloaded the federal court system. Many of those other crimes, including gun trafficking, organized crime and the increasingly violent drug trade, are now routinely referred to state and county officials, who say they often lack the finances or authority to prosecute them effectively.

Bush administration officials say the government’s focus on immigration crimes is an outgrowth of its counterterrorism strategy and vigorous pursuit of immigrants with criminal records.
Immigration prosecutions have steeply risen over the last five years, while white-collar prosecutions have fallen by 18 percent, weapons prosecutions have dropped by 19 percent, organized crime prosecutions are down by 20 percent and public corruption prosecutions have dropped by 14 percent, according to the Syracuse group’s statistics. Drug prosecutions — the enforcement priority of the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations — have declined by 20 percent since 2003.

One southwestern border state’s attorney general called this a “national abdication” by the US Justice Department.

In happier news involving the US, Swiss banking giant UBS announced last week that it was shuttering 19,000 accounts held by Americans. The move, in which UBS will send checks to account-holders or transfer funds, will expose the holdings and will shine unprecedented light on possible tax evasion or money laundering.

Italy: Assets,, Murder Suspect Seized

Italian anti-mafia police on Friday seized €100 million worth of real estate, companies, shares and one luxury vehicle in a strike aimed at the Casalesi clan of the Camorra mafia outside Naples. The real estate alone seized amounted to 16 plots of land and 61 properties in Naples, Arezzo and Pisa.

And in another blow to the Camorra, police last week arrested Guiseppe Setola, thought by investigators to be behind 18 murders in the past five months, including the September murders of half a dozen African immigrants. Earlier last week, police had surrounded Setola’s hideout, but Setola escaped through a tunnel and into the local sewer system. It was his third such escape since he slipped out of a hospital during treatment for his eyesight while in custody.

“The Setola hit squad has been dispatched to history,” (regional Carabinieri head Carmelo) Burgio said in an interview on Sky TG24 television. “He’s an important figure in the local mafia, a bloodthirsty leader whose attempt to flee proved once and for all that his eyesight is fine.”

Setola had been sought as a suspect in a dozen homicides, including the murder of six immigrants from Ghana in the seaside town of Castelvolturno, north of Naples. Earlier today, investigators seized property and businesses worth 10 million euros ($13.2 million) they said Setola controlled through front men and women, Ansa news agency reported.