Reuters confirms what the Bulgarian press have been writing about for weeks – that some suspected crime bosses will run for parliament seats in the July election. If they win, they get parliamentary immunity.
The local press has been intensely focused on the so-called Dupnitsa “businessman” Plamen Galev, who is running as an independent candidate from the southwestern town of Dupnitsa. Galev has been in custody since January and is suspected of racketeering and running an organized crime group.
Reuters, however, also mentioned father-and-son team Veselin and Hristo Danov, who are running for seats from the Black Sea coastal town of Varna. Both are accused of extortion, money laundering and luring people into prostitution.
Also in Bulgaria last week, a doctor and two officemates were convicted of issuing false disability pension documents to healthy people. The doctor, Boryana Hinova, received a three-and a half year sentence, while a typist and a clerk received three years apiece.
Kazakhstan: Ex uranium boss charged with embezzlement
Kazakhstan’s security services arrested the deposed head of the state uranium company on embezzlement charges last week, in a development Reuters reports is the latest in a string of high-profile criminal cases in the Central Asian state. The deepening financial crisis has sharpened divisions among Kazakhstan's ruling elite and triggered a chain of criminal investigations and arrests in government and industry.
The USSR-era KGB’s successor agency in Kazakhstan, the KNB, said it had arrested Mukhtar Dzhakishev, who had until recently headed state uranium producer Kazatomprom, overseeing its expansion to become the third-largest uranium producer. Dzhakishev arrest came just days after Kazatomprom fired him. Another Reuters story has details of his alleged wrongs:
"Preliminary results of the investigation show that Mukhtar Dzhakishev and other managers ... squandered state property in the form of Kazakhstan's largest uranium fields by handing them to a number of offshore companies," the KNB said.
The KNB singled out the sale of a 30 percent stake in the Kyzylkum uranium joint venture, which runs the country's largest uranium mine, Khorasan, as an example of an illegal transaction. It said the stake was sold for 15.6 million tenge ($103,700), but did not name the buyer.
Canada's Uranium One owns 30 percent in the venture and a group of Japanese firms own another 40 percent. The rest belongs to Kazatomprom.
Neither Uranium One nor the Japanese group could be reached for comment. A Kazatomprom spokesman said he had no information on the probe.
The arrest, however, has the business community worried. Various businesspeople, including the head of the state bank and a construction mogul, wrote in an open letter to Kazakhstan’s president:
"His arrest seems to be inexplicable and negatively affects the country's business climate as Kazakh entrepreneurs no longer feel they are protected by law," the group wrote in the letter addressed to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. They urged Nazarbayev, who wields sweeping powers in the oil-rich nation, to ensure that the investigation was fair.
They’re not the only ones who think something’s a bit suspect. Galym Nazarov, head of the company’s treasury department, told a Kazakh newspaper:
"I believe it is related to one company that won a tender [. . .] probably, someone very influential stands behind this company, since they demanded in ultimatum form that Mukhtar Dzhakishev give them all construction [contracts for a] network of substations and transmission lines [. . .] obviously, he refused [. . .] but those people got offended and this year, the political state of affairs is in their favor, and in our country this means much more than the truth," Nazarov asserted.
UNODC: Crime wave helps OC
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime head Antonio Maria Costa last week continued to talk about how the worldwide recession is a boon to organized crime groups, but this time added that the cash-rich groups may be extending their legitimate reach by buying real estate and other assets. He urged wealthy countries to make money laundering a part of any overhaul of regulations in the global financial system.
"The penetration of the system happens at many levels. A fight against money laundering only limited to financial transactions is not right, and there are certain sectors that are really vulnerable like real estate, the hotel industry, the gambling industry," he said.
This was a hot topic last week, with Bloomberg reporting that Italian crime groups could take advantage of the recession by buying into foundering legitimate businesses. The president himself warned so earlier this month, around the same time that the Bank of Italy warned that banks had let their money-laundering guards down.
Meanwhile, it would appear that new measures to reduce carbon emissions will also invite the mob. In a new twist on Italy’s mob-related wind farm troubles – in which mob groups are horning in on new EU wind-farm subsidies – Interpol is warning that a nascent forest carbon credit industry could also fall prey to organized crime groups.
Peter Younger, an environmental crimes specialist at the world's largest international police agency, was referring to a U.N.-backed scheme called reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.
REDD aims to unlock potentially billions of dollars for developing countries that conserve and restore their forests. In return, they would earn carbon credits that can be sold for profit to developed nations that need to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
"If you are going to trade any commodity on the open market, you are creating a profit and loss situation. There will be fraudulent trading of carbon credits," he told Reuters in an interview at a forestry conference in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian island of Bali. "In future, if you are running a factory and you desperately need credits to offset your emissions, there will be someone who can make that happen for you. Absolutely, organized crime will be involved."
Serbia, Croatia sign police cooperation agreement
Serbian and Croatian interior ministers last week signed a cooperation deal that foresees liaison officers between Zagreb and Belgrade, allows a witness protection program, and allows the exchange of information, personnel and training.
“The idea is to create a regional anti-organized crime center, which would coordinate all criminal and intelligence information, and which would help keep the situation under control and keep us one step ahead of criminal actions,” said (Serbian Interior Minister Ivica) Dačić .
The minister said that the center could be located in Belgrade and headed by a Croatian, or vice versa, and that information could be exchanged on a daily basis, adding that cooperation between Serbia and Croatia should be an example to encourage other countries in the region to join in.
Not bad for two countries who were at war with each other in the 1990s, but does the region need yet another police layer to get the job done? Can’t an agreement like this just mandate cooperation between the two countries and leave it at that? I would bet that weekend exchange visits to hunting lodges outside each others’ capitals would probably get more cooperation for the money than would starting up a “regional anti-organized crime center” at which no cop would probably want to work.
Mob bosses held for scam involving Venezuelan bonds
Italian anti-mafia prosecutors have foiled a plan involving the Sicilian Mafia, fake South American bonds and several large Western banks, according to South Africa’s BusinessDay.
ITALIAN prosecutors have broken up an international ring led by the Sicilian Mafia that tried to use fake Venezuelan bonds to obtain credit lines totalling 2,2bn from HSBC Holdings, Bank of America and unidentified British banks, according to an arrest warrant.
“This was a colossal operation,” Marcello Viola, one of the lead prosecutors, said in Palermo, Sicily on Friday. Some of the Mafia-linked people involved “were experts in finance who travelled the world”, he said.
Also last week, Italian police arrested more than 60 people around Naples, in series of raids that have brought in more than 130 people in the past week.
Ten women were among those arrested, including 48-year-old Luisa Terracciano, the wife of one of the clan bosses, who had taken over the running of the organisation after her husband was netted a few weeks ago.
The suspects were wanted for offences including smuggling cocaine from Spain and taking protection money, or pizzo, from businesses. A private security firm run by the Sarno clan was shut down in Wednesday's crackdown, ANSA news agency reported.