Bulgaria’s new government has new plans for fighting the organized crime and corruption that have given the country a black eye since it became a member of the EU in January 2007. Six special teams will start work in September , reported the Bulgarian press.
The teams that will be functional in September will consist of a prosecutor, an agent from the Bulgarian State National Security Agency (DANS), an inquirer, an investigator, a customs agent and a tax agent, according to a report in the Bulgarian daily newspaper Standart.
The teams, which will be stationed in different regions across Bulgaria - reporting back to a central investigation room, will target corruption, money laundering, terrorist activities, EU funds fraud, drugs and human trafficking.
The teams – which will be thoroughly polygraphed to prevent leaks – will be working on commission, and the government will pay them 50,000 lev ($36,100) for each high-ranking criminal convicted.
Russia: Court Refuses New Politkovskaya Investigation
A Moscow court last week rejected a request from the family of slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya for a new investigation into her death . Three men accused of playing minor roles in Politkovskaya’s October 2006 contract-style killing were acquitted earlier this year; the Supreme Court overturned their acquittal in June. They face a renewed trial, which began last week .
Politkovskaya’s family, however, had complained that the original trial was not only shoddily and sloppily conducted, but that by trying people accused of driving, serving as lookout and supplying a pistol, the Russian justice system had avoided prosecuting a mastermind and/or a gunman. Reuters reported that the family will appeal.
"We will appeal against this very strange decision by the military court," Ilya, Politkovskaya's son, told Reuters by telephone. "Everyone supported further investigation.
"We want further investigation and then one court for everyone involved from the killer to the person who really ordered the murder," he said.
Politkovskaya – who was relentlessly critical of both the Kremlin and the Kremlin-backed government in Chechnya in her articles and books before she was shot in 2006 – was one of 17 journalists to have been slain in Russia since 2000. Last month also marked the fifth anniversary of the death of Paul Klebnikov , the founding editor of Forbes Russia. Courts have not managed to convict a single person for ordering any of the killings.
Serbia: Tadic Warns of Surge in OC
Serbia will soon face a “new regional wave of organized crime,” President Boris Tadic warned last week .
"For the first time in our history we are facing trans-continental organized crime in the Western Balkans. Serbia, as this part of the Balkans' central country, requires an exceptionally prepared police system to face these challenges," he told the Serbian police (MUP) publication Police Today (Policija Danas)…
Tadic didn’t give further details in the interview as to who might be at the root of the problem in the region, nor did he elaborate on what the police could do to fight back. Coincidentally, Serbian police last week arrested eight members of a crime group suspected of regional robberies . The suspects, all men from Bosnia and Serbia, are thought to have committed robberies in both countries and elsewhere in Europe. Four of the men were arrested as they tried to rob a businessman in the shady border town of Loznica.
Albania: No ‘Foreign’ Investigations
Albania last week put the kibosh on a potential Council of Europe investigation into alleged organ harvesting in the country. Council rapporteur Dick Marty was appointed to investigate allegations that the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army kidnapped hundreds of Kosovo Serbs during the 1999 war and took them to northern Albania for organ harvesting before killing them. The allegations first appeared in a memoir written by Carla Del Ponte , the former head prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Marty, a Swiss senator, was appointed by the Council, Europe’s top human rights watchdog, to look into the claims . He received no warm welcome in Albania, reported Serbian radio-television B92 .
"Only the Albanian prosecution has a right to carry out an investigation in the territory of Albania," Albanian Minister of Justice Enkeled Alibeaj told Marty, according to an RTV 21 report.
Alibeaj also told the Swiss CoE official that "no foreign citizen can conduct procedural investigative actions in the Albanian territory."
"An investigation can be launched only by the Albanian prosecution based on requests coming from other countries. In that case the prosecution undertakes all actions to clear up the issue."
Montenegro: Another Vijesti vs. Government Fracas
The mayor of the Montenegrin capital Podgorica will face criminal charges after an altercation with two journalists from the independent newspaper Vijesti, reported B92. Montenegrin State Prosecution reported that it would investigate both Mayor Miomir Mugosa and the paper’s editor-in-chief Mihailo Jovovic after an incident last Wednesday night near Podgorica’s Art Café.
From there the incident gets a little bit Rashomon , with the mayor saying that he was attacked first, and that he’s often followed around town “by persons who hid in bushes and entrances to buildings ;” the newspaper guys maintain that they were attacked after filming illegally parked vehicles in front of the café.
If the photographer and editor were attacked, it certainly would be nothing out of the ordinary in Montenegro . Vijesti owner Zeljko Ivanovic was beaten by unknown assailants in September 2007 after the paper did a series on the business dealings of Montenegro’s prime minister. Later the same year, journalist Tufik Softic – who had done stories about the drug trade in northern Montenegro – was beaten with baseball bats. The 2004 murder of another newspaper editor has meanwhile never been solved. Montenegro may not be Russia, but writing about powerful business or political figures or crime groups isn’t the safest job to hold down in either country.
Germany: Crime Clans Cash in on Clunkers?
Germany’s cash-for-clunkers program has attracted tens of thousands of Germans wanting to trade in their old heaps in exchange for $3,600 off a new car. But the lucrative program -- $7 billion allocated this year – has apparently also attracted a “black market scandal” according to Time magazine.
"The problem is that there is no supervision of the companies to ensure that they actually scrap the cars," says Frank Wolff, director of the environmental-crime division of the Hamburg police. "These firms are supposed to turn the cars into scrap, but instead, some are selling them to buyers in Africa."
While there most certainly are a few dealers deciding that they’ll make more money by selling the cars elsewhere than they will by selling them for scrap metal – the price of which has taken a dive in the past year – the numbers, however, don’t prove that dubious dealers are doing this on a massive scale. Time reports that police in the port city of Hamburg have found 43 cars that had been declared scrapped but were in fact headed to buyers in Africa and eastern Europe. Forty-three. But, the magazine writes, “some law enforcement experts” warn that as many as 50,000 cars have already been sold. Export officials are dismissive about that figure, however, and the magazine says there is no statistic to either prove or disprove the claim.
Italy: Mob Football Takeover Foiled
Italian police have arrested four suspects and are looking for three more for allegedly trying to buy the Rome-based Lazio football club .
Alleged collaborators with the Camorra clan based in Casal di Principe, outside Naples, “even used violence to try to force SS Lazio’s controlling shareholder to sell its stake” between 2004 and 2006, Finance Police said today in an e-mailed statement. Cash acquired through “acts of violence and intimidation, through mafia activity” was to be “laundered through the well-known soccer club,” police said.
The clan has a lot of money to launder, according to Bloomberg. A Rome-based research institute last year reckoned that Italy’s three main organized crime groups make some $100 billion per year – compare that revenue figure to Exxon’s profits last year at $45.2 billion. The