Officials from four former Yugoslav countries promised over the weekend to work together to fight organized crime, corruption and terrorism. Ministers of security and interior from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia also mentioned in Sarajevo that they would make sure that their national laws complied with European Union standards.
The ministers were also unanimous that the recent assassination of controversial Croatian journalist Ivo Pukanić had confirmed that mobsters in the Balkans made up a single network.
One of the characteristics of the Pukanić case is the fact that Croatians, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims were engaged in his assassination, said (Croatian Interior Minister Tomislav Karamarko), adding that this means that none of mafia groups or organized crime gangs are limited by state frontiers.
None of this is new to any Balkan observer, much less to professional law enforcement in the region. And I suspect that all of the European Union talk, in the wake of the European Commission’s annual scorecard of potential member countries – a scorecard that slammed every one of these countries’ approaches to organized crime – is more posturing for Brussels than it is a sign of real change.
Montenegro, for example, would have been looking to benefit from the announcement. The day before it came, EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn told Montenegrin television that the country’s biggest obstacles to eventual EU membership were organized crime and corruption.
"The harder Montenegro clamps down on corruption and organized crime, the bigger its chances of making more progress,” Rehn said, adding that membership could not be achieved “before the country conducts major reforms.
Former US Officials to Testify
Two former US officials agreed last week to testify against their Czech former boss Viktor Kozeny in a Manhattan trial that aims to establish whether the Czech expatriate bribed officials in Azerbaijan.
In the late 1990s, Kozeny was trying to buy Azerbaijan’s state-run oil company. Former Defense Department analyst Christine Rastas and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent John Pulley had left their jobs to work for Kozeny and apparently heard some unsavory things about their boss, according to affidavits made public last week in Manhattan federal court.
Rastas, who worked for a Kozeny-run investment bank, says she attended a dinner where Egyptian businessman Shafik Gabr, an investor in Kozeny’s project, asked why the Azeris would sell the oil company, according to the court documents. Kozeny said “he thought the Azeri government would do what Kozeny wanted because he was paying the president of Azerbaijan,” Rastas said.
Pulley, Kozeny’s security chief from 1995 to 2000, says he witnessed Kozeny’s lawyer, Hans Bodmer, creating Swiss bank accounts for Azeri officials, other documents show. He says he inferred Kozeny “might be giving things of value to Azeri officials.”
Azeri government officials have denied taking bribes. Kozeny, however, has admitted outright that he paid them off, but said that US law does not apply to him because he is not an American citizen. His American partner in the deal, however, will go on trial in March. Kozeny – dubbed the “Pirate of Prague” in the press – lives in the Bahamas and is fighting his extradition to the US.
Russian Mob Stealing Globally?
When the treasurer of Sandwich, Massachusetts couldn’t pay the town’s bills last month because there wasn’t enough money in the coffers, and the bank told him that he himself had authorized four large transfers, he called in the local police. They in turn found that hackers had got into the town’s accounts and transferred $34,000 to accounts in US cities and in St Petersburg, Russia.
That has law enforcement convinced that Russian organized crime is involved, (Sandwich Police Chief Michael) Miller said.
Sandwich police are consulting with both state Attorney General Martha Coakley's office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine which agency will take over the investigation.
"This is above us, way above us," Miller said.
Russian officials are aware that their home-grown organized crime operates outside Russian borders, as was made evident by last week’s signing of a Russia-Hungary pledge to renew their joint coordination team to fight international organized crime.
Perhaps Russia and Germany should sign a similar agreement. According to Berlin’s top organized crime cop, the city is a Russian mob hub. UPI had the story:
If you own a BMW X5 or a Porsche Cayenne, you shouldn't park it in the streets of Berlin too often, because these fancy SUVs top the list from which the Russian mafia is "shopping" in Germany's capital. The criminals cruise the rich neighborhoods until they find their car of choice, then open, short-circuit and load it onto a truck -- in less than two minutes. Chances are the owners won't see their cars again.
"Such vehicles are brought into nearby body shops … where they are tuned or taken apart completely," Bernd Finger, the head of the Berlin Criminal Office, said earlier this month in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "From there they are taken to intermediate traders in Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia. And from there they are taken into the buyer's country, most often Russia or Asia."
Car theft is actually the Russian mob’s smallest potatoes, Finger went on to say. Prostitution and human trafficking are bigger, outshined only by money laundering. Meanwhile, the German Police Union is admonishing German political leaders to spend more money on the cops, and to spend the money in the right way.
Italy Police: Mob Itemsl
The head of a Sicilian mob clan and his three sons managed to do all the clan’s business from their separate cells in a maximum-security Italian prison, police said last week. Francesco Madonia and his offspring may have been held under various restrictions, such as limited visitations, single cells, no packages and limited contact with other inmates, but using code language and mime they managed to run the family’s extortion business and order a hit on another mob boss before Madonia Senior died in prison last year. Police last week arrested a Madonia wife who allegedly carried orders out of the prison.
Police outside Palermo last week made a chilling discovery some 30 feet underground from the complex of housing estates that had served as the kingdom of Sicilian mobster Salvatore Lo Piccolo until his arrest last year: the mob’s secret firing range. The Guardian had the story:
The officers came across the shooting range by chance. While searching the flat of a suspected drug dealer, one officer noticed a large bunch of keys and asked what they were all for.
They found what appeared to be a shed in the courtyard, with an entrance opened by remote control. From there, they descended to an armoured door beyond which was a refuge for fugitives, complete with TV, air conditioning and €7,000 (£6,000) in cash.
When another security door was forced open the police found themselves navigating some 100 metres of passageways circling the foundations of the block. At the end of the last passageway was the firing range - 10 metres long and sound-proofed.
And in a novel way of breaking up La Cosa Nostra’s extortion rackets, police last week arrested 10 businessmen for allegedly paying the mob “protection” money for the past 40 years. The arrests came months after 18 other businessmen who’d been victims of “pizzo,” or protection schemes, identified their suspected extortionists in court in July. Already 255 shopkeepers and other small business owners have publicly pledged not to pay pizzo; Italy’s private employers’ federation last year decided to expel members found to be paying extortionists.
Israel: Tax Authority Hassle on OC
Israel’s Tax Authority is haggling with the country’s treasury department over hazard pay for its workers and won’t help the police pool evidence on the financial malfeasance of organized crime figures until it’s done, an Israeli police official told a parliamentary committee last week.
During the Knesset session, an incredulous committee chairman, MK Ophir Paz-Pines, asked the police representatives how long the negotiations were going on and offered to intercede with the Treasury to help speed talks along.
"The work with the Tax Authority has been limited. This has been going on for a long time," (Interrogations and Intelligence deputy head Dudu) Matzur replied.
Money Talks, German Agents Walk
Three agents of the German Federal Intelligence Service were publicly held in Pristina, accused of throwing a bomb at a European Union office, despite the emergence of a new grop, calling itself “Army of the Republic of Kosovo.”
Judges shrugged off the failure of lab tests to link the agents or a police report that supposedly said the Germans had not been involved. And questions arose about why an issue such as this was not dealt with quietly, as usual between rose. Or tempers.
One view was that the agents were held because of German intelligence reports on key Kosovar officials, reports that linked top officials tightly to organized crime.
As the hours ground on, the Pristina district court did not seem close to settling the matter and, according to Die Welt:
When the German authorities in Berlin were made to believe that the BND agents would not be freed immediately, all the resentment that had been building for the past days welled to the surface. It was then directed at Pristina. There was talk of “massive pressure” being exerted by the German government. The German authorities threatened to cut aid to Kosovo. Only then were the three men let free on Friday evening. On Saturday morning they were flown out of the country by a special plane of the BND.
German aid is big to Kosovo—the country is the second largest bilateral donor country after the United States. Since 1999, Germany has given 280 million euros to Kosovo.
The theory of why Prime Minister Hashim Thaci allowed this, according to German media, is that two German intelligence reports accuse him, former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and Xhavit Haliti of the parliamentary leadership of involvement in organized crime.