The steady decline of the US dollar over the past year has not only squeezed economies of countries that export to the US and helped drive up the price of oil, but the dollar’s loss of value has also prompted criminals to eschew the diving currency in favor of the euro.
If the dollar falls more this year and next, criminals will be even more likely to use the euro for their drug deals and to settle scores, according to Criminal Intelligence Services Canada's annual report.
Well before the dollar plummeted, and well before the euro was launched throughout much of the now-27-nation European Union, experts worried that the new currency would be a boon to criminals. With the introduction of the euro – legal tender for 12 EU states, four other European countries, two Balkan countries and a handful of other jurisdictions around the world – the days when criminals who sold cocaine in Italy had to launder their lira to hide where they’d sold the cocaine are long gone. And the euro’s large denominations -- €200 and €500 – were more valuable than the $100 bill even before the greenback began its serious slide. (Today €200 is worth $292; €500 is worth $730.) One million dollars won’t fit into an attaché case; €1 million euros will.
It would then stand to reason that euros are attractive to counterfeiters as well. Europol, Spain and Colombia made the largest-ever seizure of counterfeit euros in Bogota last week. The Colombian National Police, supported by officers of the Spanish Brigada de Investigacion del Banco de Espana and Europol, raided a clandestine print shop and found more than €11 million in €200 and €500 notes. They arrested one in the operation and seized the machinery and other equipment for making euros, as well as smaller amounts of US dollars and Colombian pesos.
EU to Bulgaria: Do more against corruption
An EU commissioner called on Bulgarians last week to do more in the fight against organized crime and corruption. “I call on the whole of society to oppose corruption and crime and support the government’s efforts to make its administration more efficient,” said Commissioner Guenter Verheugen last week after meeting Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev.
Bulgaria has already seen hundreds of millions of euros of EU funding frozen after the bloc issued a report on the country’s lack of efforts in stamping out either evil.
Local media reported Verheugen’s visit to the Veliko Tarnovo region, as well as his remarks afterward, which again focused on ordinary Bulgarians versus criminals and corrupt politicians. “The whole society must rise in revolt against those people,” he was reported as saying.
German police: Organized crime using legitimate businesses as fronts
Germany’s organized criminals are using legal businesses to launder money, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)’s annual review of serious and organized crime.
Joerg Ziercke, the head of the BKA, said organized crime gangs were increasingly infiltrating legal industries to launder profits from the illegal drug trade and using businesses as front for criminal enterprises. The report showed that an estimated 481 million euros ($708 million) of ill-gotten gains were made behind the facade of legitimacy in Germany in 2007.
The drug trade remains the most lucrative business for organized crime groups, reported the BKA; the once-enormously popular car theft was down. (Which is good news for Montenegrins, the butts of the old Balkan joke: “Welcome to Montenegro – your car is already here.” The joke also applied to Kosovo.) White collar crime was also on the rise. And the BKA reported that it brought 602 organized crime cases to the courts in 2007 and investigated more than 10,000 suspects.
Gotti matriarch dies
The mother of five members of New York’s notorious Gambino crime family died of natural causes last week at the age of 96. Philomena “Fannie” Gotti had 16 children after marrying John J. Gotti in Italy and later emigrating to New York.
Five of Gotti's sons went on to gain notoriety with careers in the mob. The most notable was John, the "Dapper Don," who became boss of the Gambino family in 1985 after he engineered the assassination of then-leader Paul Castellano. Gotti went to prison in 1992 after he was convicted of federal racketeering charges. He died in June 2002 from throat cancer.
Two other sons, Peter, who had lived in Valley Stream, and Gene, are serving federal prison sentences..
[BS1]Mrs Gotti’s grandson, John Gotti, Jr, was arrested in New York last month and last week pleaded not guilty to federal murder and racketeering charges in Forida. No trial date has been set, but Gotti will remain in custody and could get life in prison if convicted.
UNODC: Afghan opium crop down
Afghanistan’s opium cultivation was down this year by 19 percent from last year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"The opium cultivation decreased by 19 percent to 157,000 hectares, down from a record harvest of 193,000 in 2007 while opium production has dropped less dramatically, down by 6 percent from 8,200 tons to 7,700 tons," the report said.
The number of opium-free provinces has increased by almost 50 percent from 13 to 18 which means that opium is not grown in more than half of the country's 34 provinces, it noted.
Opium cultivation according to the report, now takes place almost exclusively in provinces most affected by insurgency as 98 percent of all of Afghanistan's opium is grown in just seven provinces in the southern Afghanistan where there are permanent Taliban settlements, and where organized crime groups profit from the chaos.
"Since drugs are funding insurgency and insurgency enables drug cultivation, insurgency and narcotics must be fought together," it said.
In geographically related news, five people were arrested and two contracting companies were charged last week with bribery and conspiracy over US Department of Defense contracts in Afghanistan. Maj. Christopher West, who served with the Illinois National Guard at Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield, and Air Force Tech. Sgt. Patrick Boyd, a contracting officer at Bagram, were both arrested last week for allegedly taking $90,000 in bribes from two contractor brothers and two Afghani companies in return for awarding the brothers and the companies contracts worth more than $1 million. One of the two brothers was arrested in Chicago last week, as were the heads of the two Afghani companies. All the men face up to 15 years in prison and fines of $250,000 for bribery; conspiracy brings up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Mexico drug war fuels protests
Several hundred thousand people protested Mexico’s drug war-related violence in the country’s major cities at the weekend, challenging Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s 21-month-old policy of fighting Mexico’s drug lords with 36,000 soldiers.
The weekend protests followed a particularly violent week, which saw over 130 killings including 18 decapitations, 12 of which were in the normally peaceful Yucatan peninsular, a popular tourist destination home to the resort of Cancun.
The protesters demanded action against the bloody tide of executions, shoot-outs and kidnappings waged by drug cartels battling not only one another but government forces engaged in a nearly two-year crackdown.
Many of the protesters waved photographs of relatives killed in the violence, which has radiated out from traditional smuggling routes along the US/Mexican border to affect even usually tranquil pockets of the country.
The protests came just days after more than 120 police were fired or suspended in an anti-corruption purge in the US border state of Baja.