The investigation so far has shown that drug lord William Rosales Suarez and his bodyguards were stopped at a fake police checkpoint, where he was kidnapped, while his entourage was tied up, tortured and murdered.
The three Serbs, according to the local media, headed a team of elite bodyguards.
The motive for the kidnapping and murders is believed to have been a million dollar reward offered by Bolivian narco-cartels for the capture of Suarez. However, local police are also looking into the possibility that the massacre was related to a showdown between international cartels active in Bolivia.
Bolivia is the world's third-largest producer of coca leaves, after Colombia and Peru, and also one of the leading producers of cannabis.
Two of the three Serbs killed have been positively identified. Both the men were from Ruma, a town outside Belgrade. They are certainly not the only Serbian citizens involved in some way in the South American cocaine trade – last year, Serbian security and the DEA seized nearly three two tons of cocaine off the coast of Uruguay that Serbian and Montenegrin gangsters were sending to the European market. Serbian authorities have indicted 20 citizens of Serbia and Montenegro over the crimes, though the group’s alleged leader remains at large. Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed last week that there are many ties between Serbian crime groups and their South American counterparts, particularly when it comes to the drug trade.
At home in Serbia, meanwhile, the authorities last week turned the spotlight onto private security companies. Experts and journalists have pointed out for years that Serbia has a literally lawless approach to regulating the industry – most recently in our multi-part series on such companies. Here’s the lowdown, from one of the Serbia articles:
There are no licensing requirements, no background checks and security agencies can be opened even by criminal gangs looking for a cheap, legal way to arm their members and commit crimes. An Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project investigation found repeated examples of drug dealers and mob bosses operating security companies.
They use them for racketeering, drug and weapon smuggling, money laundering and fixing of government tenders.
One of the men convicted of killing Serbia’s prime minister and linked to several other murders opened a security firm while in prison – it was closed only after the public found out. Another accused killer, known for using bombs to attack his rivals and policemen, operated his agency for two years, losing it only when he too went to prison for unrelated crimes.
These are just two of the most egregious examples (the full story has many others). Apparently the authorities are beginning to wake up to the problem. Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said last week that the new law being drafted right now will contain major changes for the industry.
Dačić pointed out that people with criminal files will not be allowed to work in this sector, and said that he will insist that the training be conducted by the police or other state bodies.
“I hope the law will soon be on the parliament's agenda,” Dačić said.
In next-door Bosnia, police throughout the country arrested 60 people – including two police officers – when they raided more than 100 locations last week. Besides the arrests, the raids netted large quantities of weapons and ammunition, 6.5 kilos of heroin, 180 kilos of marijuana, and quantities of cocaine and pills.
In legal news, an Italian court last week acquitted a former state auditor of Montenegro of involvement in the 1990s cigarette smuggling trade. The judge concluded that Miroslav Ivanisevic had acted in line with Montenegrin laws and had not been a member of an organized crime group. Eight other people indicted the region have yet to face their preliminary hearings. The Bari court had been keen to indict Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic in the case as well, but Djukanovic enjoys immunity as head of state.
KOSOVO: Pressure at the top
Other regional heads of state were not treated with such deference last week: Customs officers with the EU’s rule-of-law mission to Kosovo thoroughly searched the luggage of Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci and four other government officials – including the transportation minister, whom EU officials have investigated for possible corruption – as they departed the VIP area of the Pristina airport for Turkey. Kosovo newspaper Zeri also reported that the VIPs had to endure a second indignity at the hands of the EU mission, known as EULEX:
They also had to walk several meters, because their car was not allowed to get close to the airplane, which is a customary practice, according to the article.
The door to the VIP zone, through which Kosovo's top-ranking officials usually drive, was blocked by a car of EULEX customs service, while several customs officers of the mission were standing nearby, said the report.
It may be unusual, but subjecting Thaci, transport minister Fatmir Limaj and the others to treatment that is normally doled out only to the hoi polloi at the Pristina airport was probably one of the best ways to let these ultra-privileged pols know that EULEX is watching them. The message has come out publicly since EULEX officers searched Limaj’s home and office a few weeks ago, but holding these guys up at the airport was a stroke of genius. No word on whether Thaci and Limaj were required to take their shoes off, or remove their laptops from their bags.
Though EULEX may be keen to go after corruption and organized crime, Kosovo’s justice system is not up to the same task, according to a new report from a US-and-Brussels-based think tank.
The International Crisis Group said in a report published Wednesday that Kosovo "struggles with uneven rule of law and a weak justice system that is failing its citizens." It says institutions are "prone to political interference and abuse of office" and cautions that "organized crime and corruption are widespread and growing."
The full report, which says that shoring up the rule of law is the only way for Kosovo to increase prosperity and recognition, can be found here.
Despite the bleak reports, officials in southeastern Europe are at least making the right noises about working together to fight crime. For example, the region’s interior ministers last week signed a cooperation agreement:
Closing the meeting, Bulgarian Interior Minister Tzvetan Tsvetanov said that the main problems in the region of Southeastern Europe, when it comes to crime, are smuggling of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and people, and that the smugglers' main destinations are countries of Central Europe.
Serbia last week also made extradition-related pledges with two of its old enemies: Croatia (with which it fought a bitter war in the early to mid-1990s) and the US (which led a NATO air war against Serbia in the late 1990s). Serbian and Croatian justice ministers agreed on a text that would eventually cover the mutual extradition of people who are involved with organized crime or corruption. Serbia and the US last week also began negotiations on mutual extraditions for those involved with serious crimes. While these are just beginnings, neither the agreement with Croatia nor the negotiations with the US would have been possible even five years ago.
Kyrgyzstan: OC involvement in unrest?
It’s widely believed that anger over corruption prompted angry crowds to oust Kyrgyzstan’s former president in April. Now organized crime groups are instigating trouble in the south of the country, since chaos means that no one will disrupt their drug trafficking networks. (Earlier this month, people loyal to former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev stormed buildings in southern regional capitals such as Osh; more recently, clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south left at least one dead.) That violence serves drug traffickers’ purposes, reported Eurasianet.org:
For members of Osh’s drug mafia, the demise of Bakiyev’s administration and its replacement by the Rosa Otunbayeva-led provisional government in Bishkek represents a threat. The Bakiyev administration was generally perceived as turning a blind eye to organized criminal activity in southern Kyrgyzstan. The concern among traffickers is that the provisional government wants to assert greater control over the South, and that it might seek Russia’s help to accomplish this aim.
“At the moment, drug lords are not afraid of Kyrgyz politicians; they are afraid of Russia. Kyrgyz politicians can be bought,” said the editor of a pro-government newspaper in southern Kyrgyzstan, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. “They are afraid of Russia, because it is suffering a lot of casualties and victims from drugs. [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin wants to sort out the situation here and create order. And if the Kremlin will put its people here, drug lords have a difficult time ahead.”
“All of the criminal elements in the South are related to the drug trafficking, because the business controls a lot of money,” he asserted.
Drugs are apparently big business in Osh, a major transit hub for drugs heading to Europe from Afghanistan. According to the article, UNODC estimates that much of the 20,000 kilos of narcotics that flow through Kyrgyzstan every year transit through Osh. One source noted that even if the situation calms and the new government replaces the members of the older guard in the capital, drug traffickers won’t be affected, because the local elites they’ve bought will remain in power.
