Italian organized crime’s infiltration of the construction industry may have exacerbated the damage caused by last week’s 6.3-magnitude earthquake in central Italy, and organized crime is also likely to stymie the post-quake recovery, according to reports.
An early morning earthquake in the Abruzzo region killed at least 280 people, left 28,000 more homeless and destroyed many buildings in the provincial capital L’Aquila and elsewhere. Geologists and civil engineers said the damage was mostly due to shoddy building – either because medieval and modern buildings weren’t up to seismic snuff, or because of the lackluster job done by crime-riddled construction companies.
Said the AP:
Public works contracts, especially in Italy's south, are vulnerable to infiltration by organized crime, prosecutors say. Builders often don't use the best materials, being pressured by mobsters to rely on suppliers close to organized crime.
And if past earthquakes are anything to judge by, those left homeless may languish in tent cities while mobsters and corrupt politicians siphon away the emergency reconstruction money.
Reuters had the story:
With billions of euros for reconstruction expected to pour in, (Prime Minister Silvio) Berlusconi's government will need to ensure transparency.
"We can be fairly sure there'll be attempts by organised crime to secure a share of this money. Abruzzo is close enough to the Camorra's power centres to make it a tempting target," said James Walston of the American University of Rome.
Italians are used to hearing promises of reconstruction only to see disaster funds siphoned off by officials and the mafia. In Sicily, home of the mafia, people still live in emergency huts built after a 1908 quake that killed 5,000.
The reconstruction in the wake of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake -- which killed 2,800 and left 200,000 homeless -- has been cited as the worst example of the misuse of government funds and political graft in post-war Italy.
Some victims of a 2002 earthquake in San Giuliano di Puglia still live in prefabricated homes, amid complaints that works have been prolonged for electoral reasons.
Berlusconi has promised that the reconstruction will be done quickly.
Croatia: Reward for Assassins
Croatia is offering €13,500 for information that could lead to the arrests of the two main suspects in the car-bombing murder of a prominent magazine editor last October.
Zeljko Milovanovic, a former member of a now-disbanded Serbian paramilitary unit that was implicated in the 2003 assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, is suspected of planting the bomb that killed Nacional editor-in-chief Ivo Pukanic and his marketing manager Niko Franic. Bojan Guduric is suspected of having activated the radio-controlled bomb. Both men are at large. Milovanovic is thought to be in Bosnia; Guduric is thought to be in northern Serbia.
More from Southeastern Europe
n other news from southeastern Europe, Serbian police last week said they’d broken up a human trafficking ring and arrested seven Serbian nationals and one Chinese citizen. The eight are suspected of illegally trafficking dozens of Chinese nationals from Serbia to Macedonia and on to Greece and other countries in the European Union. Montenegrin police last week also arrested two brothers from the northern town of Rozaj on suspicion of human trafficking. The two brothers, who haven’t yet been named, allegedly forced two waitresses from Serbia to perform sexual services in the café the brothers own. In Bulgaria, the latter type of sex trafficking nets gangsters €1 billion annually, according to a report last week from anti-corruption non-profit Riskmonitor.
Russian Paper Gets Gross Gift
Journalists at the independent Russian weekly Novaya Gazeta got a nasty package in the mail recently, according to Forbes columnist Dmitry Sidorov. In the box with a note, “From the presidential administration,” was a set of recently severed donkey ears.
Sidorov explains:
In Russian, "donkey ears" are what you get when you get squat. President Vladimir Putin famously illustrated the proper use of the idiom in the course of a 2005 spat with Latvia over border demarcation, undiplomatically quipping, "They're not going to get the Pytalovsky Region; they'll get the ears of a dead donkey."
The ear delivery was just the latest incident in a long line of harassment and worse (including the 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya) that NG journalists have suffered over the years for being critical of the Kremlin.
Briton Named Europol Head
The director of Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency was named head of Europol last week, putting an end to weeks of disagreement over which country would man the European police office.
Rob Wainwright, 41, will replace Germany’s Max-Peter Ratzel later this month. Most EU member states had backed Wainwright over Hungary’s candidate, but neither the UK nor Hungary appeared willing to compromise as of several weeks ago, raising the specter of the last appointment in 2004, which was delayed by nine months because of a disagreement between France and Germany over their candidates.
Wainwright’s tenure comes at an interesting time for Europol, according to the European Voice:
The new director will take over at a crucial time as the organisation will next year become an EU agency – meaning its financing will come from the Community budget and that changes to Europol will no longer require ratification in the member states' parliaments. The new agency will also take on a broader role in fighting all serious cross-border crime, not just organised crime.
US: Conspiracy and Bribery
Six former executives of a California-based valve company were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery last week over their alleged payments of around $7 million to various Asian and Gulf companies in exchange for contracts. The FBI has more details:
In total, the indictment alleges that from approximately 2003 through 2007, the defendants and others caused the valve company to make approximately 236 corrupt payments in more than 30 countries, which resulted in net profits to the valve company of approximately $46.5 million from sales related to those corrupt payments.
Also last week, two US Department of Defense contractors were charged with conspiracy and bribery over their alleged attempts to bribe a contracting officer in Afghanistan. The contractors are suspected of offering the officer a percentage if the officer would approve fraudulent invoices.
Germany: Handball Manager Steps Down in Scandal
The managing director of a German handball club at the center of a match-fixing scandal resigned last week, reported the Associated Press.
Uwe Schwenker stepped down Tuesday as head of THW Kiel, a top handball club that has a record 14 German league titles. The club is being investigated for allegedly bribing referees as part of a suspected match-fixing racket. Schwenker is under a criminal investigation for embezzlement, while former coach Zvonimir Serdarusic is under investigation for allegedly aiding embezzlement. The two have denied any wrongdoing.
Italy: Crime and the Quake
Опубликовано: 14 Апрель 2009
