Police Raid Organized Crime Figures

Police in the Croatian capital of Zagreb launched raids against organized crime figures last week, agencies reported. A police spokesperson said that Operation Shock was aimed at “several people linked to the criminal milieu and unresolved crimes” but did not go into details.

Reports said that police raided homes and cars of suspected organized crime figures in a long-planned operation and arrested six suspects. Spokesman Krunoslav Borovec said the suspects could not be named. Serbian station B92, however, reported among those arrested were the brothers Sebastijan, Zoran and Roko Rodic, and that police had reacted to news that the brothers were planning a revenge attack for the February murder of their brother Vinko.

Croatia is under pressure from European Union (EU) following several underworld-connected murders in the fall, including the killings of a journalist and the daughter of a prominent lawyer.

EU: Kosovo Has Lots of Work Ahead

EU ministers last week noted that Kosovo has its work cut out for it if the former Serbian province wants to one day join the 27-nation EU. Kosovo, according to the EU council of ministers, must bolster the rule of law and rid itself of organized crime and corruption.

But Kosovar authorities – no matter what bad shape their new nation is in – should have plenty of time before the EU can even order what’s called a feasibility study for potential membership: EU member states Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain have not recognized Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia on Feb. 17.

Anti-corruption Day Marked

In the same week that a US state governor was indicted on charges he tried to sell a US Senate seat and that a Wall Street-run Ponzi scheme bilked thousands out of $50 billion, the world marked Anti-Corruption Day on Dec. 9.

Belgrade marked the event with a Transparency International conference on protecting whistleblowers. TI Serbia director Nemanja Nenadic noted that Serbia would observe the day without any visible progress registered in combating corruption, though parliament passed a set of anti-corruption laws this year. Bulgaria hosted a regional event and the interior ministry tasked the country’s three mobile operators with sending every subscriber a text message reading, “No to corruption.”

Serbia: Assets and pirates

Parliament will pass new laws allowing the seizure of illegally obtained assets next year, announced Serbian Interior Minister Ivicia Dacic last week, as he proclaimed a new push against organized crime for 2009. “I can promise that no one involved in crime in the Republic of Serbia will be spared,” he said. He also deplored the prevalence of crime in the country. “You see criminals walking the streets freely with their security, and you see that it is perhaps more alluring for our children to be criminals, than to work for the state, or the army, or police,” he said, apparently not realizing that working for the state, the army or the police is hardly the stuff of children’s career dreams.

Also last week, a Bulgarian state river shipping company official told the press that Serbian pirates have attacked his boats on the Danube River 38 times in the past two years. Cargo, cables and fuel have been the targets of the armed pirates who mostly attack near the port of the Serbian steel town Smederovo, deputy director Ivan Ivanov told the BBC’s Serbian service. Interior ministry officials in Serbia were quick to scoff at the charges. Individual theft and smuggling exists, police said, but added that there was no organized pirate group on the Serbian stretch of the Danube.

US Busts of East European gangs

Las Vegas and Los Angeles police arrested 22 people in a round-up of what they called a Eurasian crime ring last week. Authorities later indicted 15 of them for aggravated identity theft. Officials initially told the press that the suspects were from Albania, Bulgaria, Armenia and Russia. The crimes they were accused of involved skimming credit card information from customers using their cards at bars, restaurants and smoke shops, and using the information to make new, false cards that could be used for thousands of dollars worth of cash and purchases. US Attorney Greg Brower said the group had made off with $1.5 million; other sources said that such gangs had been known to rip off that amount in a single weekend.

In news of theft of a more petty kind, two Russian nationals were arrested in East Texas last week for stealing money from coin-operating laundry machines. Residents at an apartment complex caught them in the act and kept them there until the police came. A police search of the two men’s car revealed $4,000 in change and receipts indicating the two had sent money back to Russia.

Kyrgyzstan: Corruption in Security Structures

The security structures of a country that faces rising Islamic extremism are compromised by corruption, reports the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on China, Eurasia and Russia. Kyrgyzstan, the hard-to-spell country surrounded by Kazakhstan, China and Tajikistan, has been ruled by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev since a peaceful revolution overthrew the last regime in 2005, but the new ruler has done little to wipe out corruption.

On November 25 the Interior Ministry listed its own most corrupt departments, and the criminal investigators were at the top of the list. The head of the Interior Ministry’s internal security service, Karakeldy Kydyrbayev, said that almost 60 officers from Interior Ministry agencies were sacked in 2008 for various violations, 39 criminal cases were launched, 36 crimes were recorded, and only 17 cases of bribery were prevented. This pervasive corruption, which the Bakiyev regime has promised to deal with since the Tulip revolution, also permeates other official bodies. (Kyrgyz Television 1, Bishkek, November 25).

Corrupt traffic cops may also be behind the country’s rising rates of vehicle crashes, reports EurasiaNet, a publication affiliated with the Open Society Institute. While crap road infrastructure and the enormous increase in the number of vehicles on the roads probably contributes to the horrific numbers – in 2007, 1,252 people died and 6,223 were injured in accidents, up one-quarter from the year before – traffic police who take bribes to supplement their $60/month paycheck are also to blame. A former traffic cop turned traffic safety lobbyist noted:

"According to my calculation, 35 percent of drivers are from the so-called ’untouchable caste.’ These are judges, prosecutors, police, intelligence officials, high-ranked bureaucrats, deputies and so on. They are unreachable by law and the police. Another 35 percent of drivers have money and are able to bribe traffic police. Imagine, only 30 percent of drivers are afraid to be punished and try to follow the rules," (Raymkuluulu)Kasymbek said.

Italy and Spain and Calabrians and More.

Anti-mafia police in the Calabrian region last week seized €7 million worth of assets from a local man they believe is an associate of one of the Calabrian mob’s most powerful families. The items seized from Carmelo Bruzzese, 59, included shares, bank accounts, two electrical goods firms and various vehicles. Police also sealed off Bruzzese’s villa and several plots of land. Police suspect him of being close to the Mazzaferro-Ierino and Cuntrera-Caruana family, believed to be active in North America.


Also last week, Spain’s Guardia Civil arrested 20 people suspected of doing business with a Calabrian mob counterfeiting group and charged them with dealing and spending counterfeit Euros. The gang allegedly bought the fake Euros from the Calabrians at 30 to 40 percent of the notes’ face value, and then spent them around Spain at local shops and other businesses. The Guardia Civil has found €150,000 worth of fake €20 and €50 notes in Spain, Portugal and North Africa since the beginning of the investigation last year.

Though phone taps have been one of the more powerful tools in Italian anti-mafia police and prosecutors’ toolkits, some Italian politicians are proposing limits on telephone snooping. They are pushing for taps that can only be used to prosecute crimes carrying a prison sentence of at least 10 years. But prosecutors and judges are rebelling:

National anti-mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso has told parliament his investigations could be hampered if a new law prevents him from using wiretaps to gather information on relatively minor crimes, such as extortion and fraud, perpetrated by the major crime organisations, and if it restricts the timeframe during which taps can be conducted.

… magistrates have warned that the changes are just one of a number of reforms that would reduce the autonomy and effectiveness of the judiciary and make it more difficult to detect the white-collar crimes committed by politicians.

Which is exactly what the politicians seem to be trying to do. Corruption scandals have erupted in various regions of Italy thanks to the telephone taps on politicians, including one involving the opposition party’s offices in Naples and Florence, and another involving corruption and fraud in Calabria. All have been deeply embarrassing to the politicians. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who sponsored immunity laws at the same time that he is himself under various corruption investigations, is now trying to put the damper on the taps.

Last week Gerardo D'Ambrosio, a former anti-corruption Milan magistrate who is now an opposition MP, warned his colleagues against limiting the judiciary. "We can't compromise on justice with a premier who has passed unconstitutional laws to halt his own trials and, when that didn't work, abolished his crimes," he said. Berlusconi's reforms, he added, would make it more difficult to detect corruption. "At a time of global crisis, that seems incredible."