Mogilevich to Stay in Custody

One of the world’s most notorious mafia bosses will remain in a Moscow jail until March 23. A Moscow court ruled last week that Semyon Mogilevich, the mobster, and Vladimir Nekrasov, the owner of cosmetics chain Arbat Prestige,should stay in custody while prosecutors finalize tax evasion charges against them.

Investigators requested the time to allow the defense to study materials relating to the case and to finalize charges, the report said. Defense lawyers contested the ruling, however, saying they had declined the additional time and requested that ex-chief executive Nekrasov and Mogilevich, in detention since late January 2008, be each released on 20 million rubles ($600,000) bail. The defense denies that Mogilevich, on the FBI's most-wanted list for fraud and racketeering, has any ties to Arbat Prestige.

Police commandos seized Mogilevich, also known as Sergei Shnaider, outside a Moscow supermarket a year ago. He’s alleged to have run a $2 million tax-evasion scheme for Nekrasov’s cosmetics company. But the Ukrainian-born Mogilevich has also been wanted by the FBI since 2003 on racketeering and fraud charges; the so-called “Brainy Don” has also been investigated by British authorities for allegedly laundering the profits of arms dealing, prostitution, extortion and drug dealing through the offices of a London law firm.

Days before the court ruled that Mogilevich and Nekrasov should stay in jail, Nekrasov asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to intervene in the case. In an open letter to Medvedev, Nekrasov said he was being pressured to testify against Mogilevich.

Nekrasov wrote that the prison chief and the investigator in charge of his case told him, " ‘Do you want to get out of here, Nekrasov? Testify against Shnaider, and you'll walk free tomorrow.’ "

Nekrasov, 47, has maintained that Shnaider, 62, is not linked to Arbat Prestige, but said in the letter published in Russian media on Monday that he has come under strong pressure to provide false evidence against Shnaider. In particular, he said, his custody has been extended several times without a valid reason.

No word yet on whether Medvedev has read the letter or whether he’ll intervene. Nekrasov’s business, meanwhile, is collapsing. The Moscow Times reports that at Arbat Prestige, which once had nearly 100 stores throughout Russia, the last store closed last month after distributors stopped delivering and the company defaulted on credit repayments.

While Mogilevich is in jail, other gangsters are not letting up, according to Russia’s deputy attorney general. Alexander Bastrikin told an agency last week that organized crime has gone after five officials on the state prosecutor’s investigative committee, including one official who was recently murdered in St. Petersburg.

Serbian Minister: We Know Everything

Some 30 to 40 organized crime groups are operating in Serbia, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told B92, and what’s more, the authorities know all about them.

“Maybe it sounds pretentious, but the Interior Ministry and the services know everything. We have a complete insight into the underground. Ordinary people will ask why we are not arresting them. That is because we do not have all the necessary evidence,” Dačić said, adding that the crime groups in Belgrade were the most powerful.

But two days later, Dacic again mentioned the “white book” the police are drafting, which lists all the organized crime groups in the country and which he said will help the police and help their relationship with the courts. At the same time, however, Dacic said his ministry doesn’t need the white book, and that the white book could be incredibly dangerous if it were leaked or fell into the hands of criminals.

“The main thing is that the book is not for the public, it is not to be made public. The Interior Ministry does not need it, we have all this in our own operative analysis. This is a coordinated state action for everyone to be familiar with what’s going on,” Dačić said.

So what’s the point of creating the white book? The police apparently already know everything. And Dacic has used every recent meeting with the press to talk about the supposedly super-secret white book. (The completed final draft will likely be leaked and serialized by the Serbian media within three weeks.) Lastly and most importantly, Belgrade lawyer Bozo Prelevic, who worked on the last white book, says that the new one doesn’t have enough information on financial crime, because of the people that information could implicate.

“Part of that financial crime is funded by political parties, they don’t want to say who finances them, there’s no state auditor, and an operative anti-organized crime body does not exist,” he said.

EC Official Slams Bulgaria

Bulgaria has had yet another visit from a European Commission official, and suffered yet another slap-down about its inability to fight organized crime. EC vice-commissioner Jacques Barrot delivered the unchanging message last week and reminded Bulgaria that the EC will be reporting on the country’s progress next month, reported the Bulgarian agency Focus.

“We need to fight organized crime – this phenomenon is poison. It would prevent Bulgaria’s development till it is not finally uprooted. Everywhere around the world mafias lead to perversion, personal dramas and outrages, which pose a solid break to the economic development of the country. The growth is unthinkable unless criminal practices are curbed. Criminal groups must face the court. There is a need for political will on behalf of the government, the citizens and the economic circles. Each citizen of this society must stigmatize crime,” Jacques Barrot said.

Just after Barrot’s visit, Bulgarian police arrested a prominent businessman on organized crime charges. Neighboring Romania, meanwhile, under fire for doing nothing about corruption, charged a former prime minister for abuse of office. Is the EC pressure on the two countries working? European Union news and policy analysis site EurActiv says it might be:

Bulgaria and Romania may have not coordinated their moves, but it is precisely the "fight against high-level corruption" that is seen by the Commission as an important criterion for the two countries in the monitoring process that followed their accession to the EU. The corruption benchmark is currently the heaviest burden on Romania, while Bulgaria has been unable tofulfil the Commission's expectationsregarding fighting powerful organised crime gangs.

Ukraine: A Session on Corruption

Ukraine will hold a wide-ranging meeting on corruption next month, according to the Kyiv Post.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has suggested that the session include reports from the anti-corruption commission, the heads of the commission’s regional offices, the prosecutor’s office, the Interior Ministry and the security services.

Saakashvili on Border Control

Georgia has achieved great success in fighting corruption, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili told the country’s public broadcasting system. He went on to illustrate, sort of, how he ended the practice of border police detaining foreigners and demanding bribes.

“In spite of the fact that I have dismissed heads of Customs department, Ex Premier Nogaideli but failed to eliminate corruption there. We decided to replace frontier guards by patrol policemen and Minister Merabishvili was worried how actively a bribe was given to them. They detained groups of people, most of them foreigners. Because they got used and passed a bribe in passports. We were obliged to write a warning at all languages – Azeri, Armenian and Russian that they will be arrested for a bribe,” Saakashvili said.

No word on the results of the warnings.

In other Georgia news, the deputy interior minister of the breakaway region of Abkhazia was shot to death in a café Monday. Two masked gunmen escaped on foot. Abkhazian President Sergey Bagapsh said the murder was meant to “destabilize” Abkhazia; the Georgian breakaway region has accused Georgia of engineering similar murders in the past.

Italy: Police Arrest 41 for Drugs

Italian police last week arrested 41 people in connection with a Rome-based drug-smuggling ring, reported agencies.

Officials said the ring was run by a Naples-based mob family under an agreement with other families in Sicily and other parts of Italy. The ring allegedly imported cocaine and marijuana from Holland and Spain and laundered the profits into real estate and vehicles.