Bosnia, Serbia Arrests Halted Plots: Officials

All are believed to be members of an international crime gang operating in the region, said Serbian interior minister Ivica Dacic, and they may have connections to Montenegro as well. The suspected ringleader, Darko Elez, was arrested in Serbia. Dacic said the arrests were the result of a months-long investigation into the group; that investigation apparently also included looking into members’ finances. Serbian radio-television B92 reported:

Elez and his gang had a large amount of cash and real estate and their disposal, including five apartments in Belgrade, two in Novi Sad, 13 luxury cars, as well as safes and accounts in several banks.

The station also reported that gang members had registered the cars and property in either their own names or those of family members and registered companies under other people’s names.

Though the authorities’ list of the groups’ crimes since 2006 reads like an organized crime handbook – murder, extortion, robbery, money laundering and trafficking in drugs and weapons and motor vehicles – the Serbian daily Blic went one further, reporting that the police had stopped Elez’s group from assassinating Serbian government officials. Interior minister Dacic said later in the week that the police had prevented “several liquidations” by arresting the gang.

Other Serbian News Briefly

Also in Serbia last week, the Supreme Court continued to hear the appeal of the former paramilitary leader convicted of masterminding the murder of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003. Former paramilitary, French Legionnaire, and Serbian underworld member Milorad Ulemek, along with 11 others, was found guilty of murdering Djindjic in 2007. Because Ulemek received the maximum 40-year sentence, he’s entitled to a third-instance appeal under Serbian law. If the Supreme Court upholds the verdict on this last appeal, the verdict will be considered final.

And in “Balkan route” drug trafficking news, Bulgarian customs last week discovered 80.7 kilos (178 pounds) of heroin hidden inside a truck that was attempting to cross into the country from Turkey. They arrested the 19-year-old driver, a Serbian citizen.

US Extradites Trafficker from Romania

After an investigation that covered four continents and brought to light the global nature of big-time drug trafficking, the US last week extradited an alleged Colombian drug trafficker from Romania after he allegedly tried to buy a cargo plane to fly cocaine from South America to West Africa.

A New York federal court will try Jesus Eduardo Valencia-Arbelaez on charges of cocaine trafficking and money laundering for his alleged role as head of worldwide drug trafficking group known as “the Organization.”

 From the DEA press release:

VALENCIA-ARBELAEZ was a leader of a sophisticated international cocaine trafficking organization (the "Organization") based in Colombia and Venezuela that operated worldwide, including in Bolivia, Spain, Holland, Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, Mauritania, Mali, Cyprus, and the United States.

Beginning in September 2007, members of the Organization sought to purchase a cargo airplane for the purpose of transporting metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa. Between September 2007 and March 2009, MANUEL SILVA-JARAMILLO, a member of the Organization arrested earlier this year, conducted meetings in connection with the Organization's efforts to acquire the airplane in, among other places, Madrid, Spain, New York, and Virginia. SILVA-JARAMILLO arranged to finance the purchase of the airplane through a corporation based in Cyprus and to register it in Sierra Leone.

Valencia-Arbelaez told an undercover DEA informant in Madrid – who was helping Sila-Jaramillo procure an airplane – that he initially wanted the plane to move two to three tons of cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa. In June, he travelled to Bucharest, reportedly to establish an Organization base of operations in Romania; Romanian police, acting on a request from the US, arrested him.

As the press release notes, others have already been arrested and extradited, including two from Sierra Leone (the first time any defendants had been extradited to the US from that country) and one from Togo.

Saviano on ETA-FARC

In other cocaine connections news, Italian author Roberto Saviano told an audience in Spain last week that the Basque separatist group ETA had been involved in cocaine and weapons deals with the Colombia rebel/terrorist group FARC. The Naples-based Camorra mob, about which Saviano wrote a book, was also involved, he said.

ETA trafficked with cocaine that it obtained from FARC in order to get weapons and other kinds of backing from the Italian Camorra, Saviano claimed, referring to a 1990s investigation by Italian police.

Russia: Editor Flees Country after Ship Hijacking Comments

The Russian shipping news editor who suggested from the beginning of the mysterious Arctic Sea hijacking saga that there was more to the case than a simple hijacking has fled Russia, the BBC reported last week. Though eight men – most of them Estonians – have been charged with hijacking the Russian-crewed freighter, the motive for boarding a ship with a relatively cheap timber cargo remains an open question to some experts. One of those experts, Mikhail Voitenko, the editor of maritime journal Sovfracht, had suggested that the ship may have been carrying an undeclared cargo and that state interests were involved. (Others suggested that the cargo was illegal missiles intended to go to Iran, and that Israel’s Mossad intercepted the ship .) Voitenko reportedly last Tuesday fielded a threatening phone call saying that “serious people” were angry with him for speaking publicly and that he should leave the country; by Thursday he was in Turkey.

London’s the Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, took a closer look at the men charged with the hijacking, noting their criminal records stemmed from bar brawls, drug possession and burglary – hardly the type of stuff one would associate with criminal masterminds capable of hijacking a ship. A lawyer for one suspect added a more weirdness to the case by telling the paper that his client and his associates weren’t hijackers, but environmental activists who waved down the Arctic Sea after their dinghy ran out of fuel, and spent their time on board having a vodka party with the crew.

In Israel, a military correspondent wrote that the ship’s cargo did involve missiles for the Middle East, but that private Russian businessmen, not the Kremlin, were running the show. An intelligence agency tipped the Russian government off. The “pirates” were in fact Russian intelligence officers, he said.

EU’s Temporary Fix for Carbon Market Fraud

After a $62 million carousel fraud came to light in Britain last month, the European Union plans to take some temporary measures to prevent further fraud involving Europe’s carbon emissions market, Reuters reported.

Experts have warned that a patchwork of unilateral actions by members states like the UK and France to prevent so-called carousel fraud in spot trading of EU carbon permits could serve only to push the suspected activity into neighbouring states.

Carousel fraud in the EU's $90 billion emissions trading scheme has been signaled as "an urgent problem which requires immediate action (and) the Commission is aware that uncoordinated action may cause the fraud to move from one country to another", the spokeswoman said in an email.

The fraud involves criminals importing goods into a country, value-added tax (VAT) free, and then selling goods to domestic buyers, and charging them VAT. The criminals then disappear without paying the tax to the government, but the real money comes when goods go in a circle through various countries and the criminals cash in every time. In the British case, the fraud came from importing carbon credits into the British market.

Israeli Daily on Olmert Indictment

Ha’aretz had a timely op-ed this week on corruption in Israel – timely because of former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s recent indictment for fraud and falsification of corporate records. Olmert may be the first current or former Israeli prime minister to be charged with a crime, but the LA Times reported that the public’s disgust over official wrongdoing is at an all-time high. A former finance minister was found guilty of embezzlement in June; a former health minister was convicted last year on bribery and fraud charges; and other senior officials have been indicted. Ha’aretz’s take on the charges – which include that Olmert allegedly took money from a US businessman under shady conditions and double-billed his travel expenses – is that times have certainly changed in Israel. The paper pointed out that one early Israeli leader was expelled from a political party for building an “immodest house,” and that others took their own lives rather than face shameful corruption charges. Today, the paper writes:

“We have lost the sense of shame, and the exceptions have become the norm," says (former magazine editor Uri) Avnery. If society accepted that certain things aren't done, then when you are caught you would shut yourself up at home.” Nowadays the 11th and most important commandment is 'Thou shalt not get caugh,’” says Avnery. “Everyone knew that Olmert was not pure as the driven snow, and they ignored that. Today he is scorned for having been caught.”