A Russian ship that disappeared nearly three weeks ago has been found off the coast of West Africa . The Arctic Sea, a Russian-crewed freighter flying a Maltese flag, was found Sunday night, about 300 miles away from the island country of Cape Verde. The 15-member crew is alive and well , according the Russian Navy.
The crew had reported being attacked in Swedish waters in the Baltic Sea on July 24. Masked attackers posing as anti-drug police beat the crew, tied them up and searched the ship. They left the ship some 12 hours later. The ship was incommunicado until it was found last weekend.
Neither the Russian Navy nor the Finnish company that owns the ship have commented, so the question remains: Why was the ship targeted? Piracy might be commonplace off the coast of Somalia, but in the Baltic it’s extremely rare. A Russian maritime journal editor told Reuters that the ship probably had a secret cargo , aside from the $1.3 million in timber it was known to have carried. Another suggested that organized crime could be to blame .
"It doesn't look like bog standard piracy. If it's standard piracy, where's the ransom?" said David Osler, industrial editor at maritime newspaper Lloyds List, who raised the Russian mafia possibility.
He suggested it may have been part of a "drugs deal gone wrong", noting the hijackers' claim to be anti-drugs police and their search of the ship.
"Another possibility is a hijack to order. You steal the ship, respray it and sell it on," he told AFP. "But the ship was built in 1991 -- who would go to the trouble of hijacking that to order?"
More likely? A commercial dispute. Anti-piracy expert Nick Davis reckons it was a dispute between the ship’s owner and a third party who decided to take matters into their own hands.
Also this past week, more violence erupted in Russia’s north Caucasus , including the murder of seven women who worked in a sauna in Dagestan. The killing spree began Thursday, when 10 men shot up a police station in Buinaksk, Dagestan, killing four officers. The gunmen then moved to a nearby sauna, where they killed the seven women. The same day, a gun battle in Chechnya left two suspected militants and four police officers dead. Friday’s body count in Dagestan was five – gunmen killed two traffic police, and three militants were killed. Ingushetia’s construction minister was also murdered in his office last week, possibly over audits into construction projects. The New York Times breaks down the reasons for the violence:
Most of the violence centers on fighting between the police and various radical Islamist or more secular separatist organizations, some of which are remnants of the militant groups that fought federal forces in Chechnya’s two wars. Also common is violence among organized crime groups and competing ethnic clans.
Missing Ship: Russian OC to Blame?
Опубликовано: 19 Август 2009
Finally, the Russian hackers that waged cyber-warfare on Georgia last year (while Russia waged actual warfare on Georgia) were linked to Russian criminal groups , reported an independent non-profit that released the study to the US government. When Russia launched its five-day war with Georgia, media and government sites in Georgia – including the country’s national bank – went down. The US Cyber Consequences Unit investigated. PC World had the story:
Social networking sites helped recruit volunteers who traded tips on online forums in Russian, with one English-language forum hosted in San Francisco, the report said. Computers servers that had been used in the past to host malicious software by Russian criminal gangs were also used in the attacks.
"It appears that Russian criminal organizations made no effort to conceal their involvement in the cyber campaign against Georgia because they wanted to claim credit for it," the report said.
The hackers also used stolen American identities and US software to attack the Georgian websites.
Mexico, mafias and the state
Mexico’s drug cartels have expanded from selling drugs into areas traditionally controlled by organized crime in general – extortion, protection rackets, human trafficking, and pirating DVDs, reported the AP this week. The story details the protection shakedowns of street vendors, betting parlors and other businesses; the Gulf cartel’s attempted extortion of more than a dozen mayors last year; and a La Familia godfather who showers the poor with food, clothing and medical care. It’s depressing news, but it jibes with what I’ve been reading and thinking about this week. The money-shot insight is here:
Organized crime is seeping into Mexican society in ways not seen before, making it ever more difficult to combat. Besides controlling businesses, cartels provide jobs and social services where government has failed.
“Where government has failed” is indeed where you can find these groups. Organized crime doesn’t evolve out of nowhere . It happens in all countries, but particularly thrives in two types of countries – countries that don’t have strong governments and countries that don’t have clean governments. Those two categories obviously aren’t mutually exclusive. Leaning more toward the first category would be Kosovo. Old Balkan hand Dan Korski quoted an Albanian scholar in a Spectator blog last week as saying, “Crime is organized but the state is disorganized.” Hugging both categories would be Bosnia, the central government of which recently voted to get rid of international prosecutors targeting corruption and organized crime . Some Italian groups lean towards the second category. One Camorra supergrass describes finding politicians “willing to help us” in the anti-mafia book Gomorrah . In Mexico, barely a month goes by without news of yet another top-ranking cop or other official found to be working for the cartels. An op-ed last week explains :
It is important to note that mafias, whether they are in Colombia or Mexico, have no desire to run the country. Their agenda is simple: Government and society must give them free reign. Legal immunity and the freedom to live regally are their objectives.
The good news, the author writes, is that Mexico, like Colombia before it, can probably get rid of the cartels. The bad news is that the narco-traffickers will merely set up operations in another country, unless the American demand for drugs and the American supply of weapons both abate. The depressing news is that neither of those things will happen any time soon.
Uzbek nationals in landmark RICO case
In less-depressing news, US authorities are bringing the first-ever case to use a 1970 organized crime law against a group of mostly Uzbek alleged traffickers and slavers in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors will try to prove that 12 people ran a human trafficking ring that brought hundreds of foreign nationals into the US, and turned them into slaves in 14 states.
In a 45-count indictment handed down in May, the U.S. attorney's office accuses eight Uzbekistan nationals and four others in the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the city. Authorities say it is the first time a human trafficking ring has been charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal statute most often associated with mafia cases.
It's also the first time the charge of fraud in foreign labor contracting has been used since it was added last year to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which in 2000 became the first comprehensive federal law for prosecution of traffickers.
An attorney for one of the Uzbeks has called the government’s allegations of slavery “inaccurate and offensive,” and notes that his client has pleaded not guilty and will stand trial. No trial date has been set.
Zambia: Ex-leader acquitted in unprecedented corruption trial
In what was billed as a landmark corruption case against a former African head of state, the former president of Zambia was acquitted of all corruption charges against him Monday. Frederick Chiluba, who’d ruled Zambia for ten years after coming to power in a 1991 election, had been charged with stealing nearly $500,000 in public money. Two business executives on trial at the same time were found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. The trial marked the first time that an African leader was prosecuted for corruption in his own country. (Chiluba lost a British civil case in 2007 that found he’d laundered $50 million of public money to pay for designer clothes and shoes.) The acquittal doesn’t bode well for Zambia , said one expert.
"Most people will think he (Chiluba) was just forgiven, especially (given) that his (co-accused) were found guilty, and this will complicate the fight against corruption. No one will take the fight seriously," said Jotham Momba, a professor of political science at the University of Zambia in Lusaka.
