Croatia’s organized crime problem has been in the spotlight this month, first because of the murder of a prominent lawyer’s daughter in the capital, and now because of the latest killings, of Nacional editor-in-chief Ivo Pukanic and marketing director Niko Franjic. The European Union is watching the country closely to see what the authorities will do in light of these murders, and warns that Croatia’s possible membership in 2010 is now on shaky ground.
The latest police measures also include the formation of a Croatian FBI, reports the local press.
A special department will be established for work with informers from the underground, a sector for logistic support and a sector which will deal with general crime, terrorism, war crimes and extreme violence. The Croatian FBI will tightly co-operate with the USKOK (Office for the prevention of Corruption and Organised Crime), intelligence agencies and the Prosecution, but local police officers will be oblivious to their investigations. Secret agents will be included as the constitutive part of investigations, who will infiltrate criminal groups and will be able to use secret apartments, pay informers and recruit occasional associates.
Be that as it may, outside observers say that Prime Minister Ivo Sanader is going to have to make good on his promises of recent weeks, and that Brussels should take extra care in allowing new members into the EU if it doesn’t want to have another Bulgaria in the ranks.
U.S. Official on Romanian Corruption
Corruption in Romania is stifling growth and investment, said the outgoing US ambassador to the country last Thursday. Nicholas Taubman recommended swift and equal justice for all as a way to fight the country’s endemic graft. He also noted that Romania will never be competitive with Western Europe if it doesn’t improve its roads and transportation networks. The AP story also ran on Forbes website, for any potential investor to see.
Mob News from Italy
Nearly 50 people from both sides of a mafia-clan vendetta that led to the execution-style murders of six people outside a pizzeria in Duisberg, Germany last year went on trial last Monday. Both clans are from the shadowy Calabrian mafia, or ‘Ndrangheta, which managed to keep a low profile until the Duisberg murders.
The long-running feud between the Pelle-Vottari and Nirta-Strangio clans has claimed nearly 20 lives since 1991 and was already the focus of an investigation begun in 2006, before the Duisburg killings.
More than 30 members of the two clans from the small town of San Luca were arrested in a major dragnet two weeks after the Duisburg killings.
The main suspect in the killings, Giovanni Strangio, 29, of the Nirta-Strangio clan, remains at large.
Eleven women are among those who went on trial Monday, while three remain at large and are being tried in absentia. They face charges of criminal association as well as arms trafficking and illegal arms possession. Another 14 defendants will go on trial on November 11.
In other mafia news, members of the Camorra – the mob group based around Naples – have received quite a bit of money every month, not from extortion or other protection rackets, but fairly and legally, from renting villas to NATO. American NATO officers have for years been renting a villa that belongs to the mother of Antonio Iovine, a Camorra clan head who’s been on the run for 12 years, wanted for murder and other crimes. Italian police said there are scores of other cases of NATO personnel renting properties owned by the Camorra.
Colonel Carmelo Burgio, who heads the 1,360 Carabinieri in the Naples area, which is infested by the many family-based clans that make up the Camorra, said: “Last year we succeeded in sequestering €100 million [£79 million] of assets belonging to the Bianco-Corvino clan of the Camorra, including about 50 villas. We then discovered that 40 of these were rented out to NATO personnel. Most of them are still living there, with the difference that the rent, which ranges between €1,500 and €3,000 a month, is now paid into a state fund.”
While the world’s most powerful military alliance may not be standing up to the Camorra, resistance is coming from two unlikely fronts: an Italian newspaper petition and one Italian priest. Some 200,000 people – including writers from around the world – have signed the newspaper La Repubblica’s petition supporting Roberto Saviano, the writer of the anti-Camorra book “Gomorrah.” Saviano has received death threats and has lived under police protection for two years. Meanwhile, in Casal di Principe, a town north of Naples that became briefly famous 14 years ago when the Camorra killed a local priest for refusing to hold a mass for a murdered mobster, another priest has donned the anti-Camorra mantle. Father Carlo Aversano told Sky News, “I tell the youngsters not to idolize these gangsters. It could lead to their death. They must not choose the way of evil and in this town the evil is the Camorra.”
In less-evil news, members of a small-time Italian gang were branded “idiots” for sending a donkey’s head to a shop owner last week, in a botched attempt to emulate The Godfather, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The gang's target, a local bread shop owner who had refused to pay protection money, was so puzzled by the confused threat that he presumed it was a practical joke.
In Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film made from Mario Puzo’s novel, mafia boss Don Corleone uses the "gift" of a severed horse's head to intimidate film producer Jack Woltz into giving his godson a part. Woltz woke up one morning to find the bloody head lying next to him in his bed, and immediately consented to the request made by the Don, played by Marlon Brando.
But while that threat made sense – the head was of Woltz's prized thoroughbred stallion - there was no such context for the donkey.
"The man didn't know the donkey, he didn't own the donkey, he doesn't care about donkeys. It didn't make sense. It was the work of idiots," a police spokesman in Villafranca Padovana, northern Italy, said.
Report: UN purchasing corrupt
A task force designed to root out corruption in UN purchasing operations told the General Assembly last week that it had found fraud or corruption in five contracts worth a total of $20 million, and recommended that more than 50 other cases should be investigated.
The UN Procurement Task Force said they’d found “improprieties, corruption and malfeasance” when investigating the UN pay and benefits systems at the New York headquarters, the Congo peacekeeping operation and at offices in Kenya, Greece and one other undisclosed location. The report also pointed out that investigations are ongoing at the UN office in Afghanistan, and at the Economic Commission for Africa. The report covers July 2007 to July 2008.
Some of the cases involved steering contracts to relatives or kickbacks, reported the New York Times.
The task force has been viewed with suspicion by some United Nations members since it was formed in January 2006, after the oil-for-food scandal involving kickbacks in the program under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil and to buy humanitarian goods.
The task force report said that 22 vendors had been sanctioned by the United Nations during its years in operation and that it had identified more than 20 fraud and corruption schemes involved in some $630 million in contracts.
But the report and two responses from the United Nations underscore the tension between the Secretariat building and the task force, which is run by Robert Appleton, a former assistant United States attorney in Connecticut, and has 19 investigators of diverse nationalities.
The task force says the United Nations has not done enough to screen vendors and has allowed corrupt individuals to continue getting contracts after changing companies’ names. It also criticizes the organization for not pursuing millions of dollars in lost revenue with any zeal.
“It is a matter of concern that the task force’s recommendations for recovery actions — supported by documentary evidence of fraud, corruption and misappropriation of funds resulting in losses and damages — have not been vigorously pursued,” the report says.
Duma members under scrutiny
Spain issued an arrest warrant last week for Russian Duma member Vladislav Reznik over his alleged links with Russian organized crime, reported the Moscow Times. Police had raided Reznik’s Mallorca villa the weekend before, seizing documents, computers, artwork and luxury cars in their quest to link him to purported Russian crime boss Gennady Petrov. Reznik was not home at the time, and as a Duma deputy (from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party) enjoys immunity from prosecution in Russia. Spain’s likelihood of arresting Reznik is already low. Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov did little to make the arrest more of a possibility when he denounced the warrant last week, saying, “This is not the first time that, by using the old broken record about the so-called Russian mafia, Russian politicians and businessmen become targets of inexplicable claims by foreign law enforcement authorities.”
Another United Russia member in the Duma, Valery Draganov, is suspected of abusing his then-office – as head of customs in the late 1990s – by allegedly ordering that customs’ accounts be transferred to an unauthorized bank. Draganov has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, but if he loses, the investigative committee will ask the Duma to strip him of his immunity so that he can be tried. He could face 10 years in prison if convicted.
ICIJ looks at global cigarette trade
Western multinational cigarette companies may have been named and shamed over their collusion with international smokes smuggling in lawsuits in recent years, but that doesn’t mean that the trade has ended, according to a group of investigative journalists. The good people at the Center for Public Integrity have a global reporting crew, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and they’ve done a series on the global illicit tobacco trade, which can be found on our website here.
One story outs the brand Jin Ling, produced in “renegade factories” throughout Eastern Europe and Russia for the Western European market. The brand pays no advertising and has no legal market – and appears to be manufactured solely for smuggling. Another story reveals that China makes 200 billion counterfeit cigarettes every year. Still another talks about the unrepentant British cigarette company Gallaher, which continued smuggling though other companies had renounced and quit the trade. The series was pegged to the meeting of 160 country delegates meeting in Geneva last week to negotiate a global protocol to crack down on cigarette smuggling.