ROME—A judge Tuesday ordered the arrest of 56 people, including one of Italy’s richest men, as part of an international probe into an alleged $2.7 billion money-laundering and tax-evasion scheme involving two major Italian telecommunications providers.
Prosecutors allege billionaire Silvio Scaglia was part of a ring with mafia ties that used phony [...]

Tags: Babelgum, Corruption, Fastweb, italy, Money laundering, organised crime, Telecom Italia

The saga of the arrest of alleged organised crime boss and ex-secret service undercover agent Alexei Petrov  has reached a stage when it has become difficult to draw a clear picture of what has been going on between Bulgaria’s organised crime and the country’s political class over the past 10 years.
In [...]

Tags: Alexei Petrov, Boiko Borissov, Bulgaria, Galevi brothers, operation Octopus

Suspicion that organised crime may have been behind the deadly collapse of Cologne’s city archive grew on Monday as more falsified building protocols emerged.
An additional 28 falsified records for underground metro construction at various sites across the city have been discovered, an investigation insider told daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
“We assume that it [...]

Tags: Corruption, Germany, organised crime

Last October, the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev disbanded the Drug Control Agency (DCA) responsible for intercepting illicit drugs transiting through Kyrgyzstan from Afghanistan and destined to reach Russia and Europe. Instead, the president assigned the interior ministry to control drug trafficking in the country (www.government.gov.kg, October 26, 2009). Since Bakiyev’s [...]

Tags: Afghanistan, Gas, Kyrgyzstan, Oil, russia

Russia and the United States reaffirmed their commitment to combat drug trafficking when a bilateral Presidential Drug Trafficking Working Group recently met in Moscow, signing framework documents detailing the joint fight against illegal drug trade, prevention measures, treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts.
The overarching goal, however, is to work out [...]

Tags: Afghanistan, Drug trafficking, heroin, russia, USA

Police have taken property valued in the tens of millions from organised crime figures with plans to sell the goods and use the money to fund social programmes, such as new kindergartens, schools and primary health care facilities.
Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic said on Sunday (January 17th) that 21 financial investigations against 208 organised crime [...]

Tags: Confiscated property, confiscation, law on confiscation, organised crime

Timbuktu, Mali (Reuters) - In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called “the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11.”
The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On [...]

Tags: Al Qaeda, Cocaine, Colombia, Drug trafficking, FARC, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Venezuela

Four Australians, three of whom are Victorian, will go on trial in an Italian court next month on charges of conspiring with the Calabrian Mafia to import one of Australia’s largest cocaine shipments.
The accused - Nicola Ciconte, 54, of Rowville; Michael Calleja, 51, of Kew; Vincenzo Medici, 45, of Mildura, and Carmelo Loprete, 41, of [...]

Tags: Australia, Carmelo Loprete, Cocaine, Drug trafficking, italy, Michael Calleja, Nicola Ciconte, Vincenzo Medici

A Greek prosecutor ordered on Wednesday the arrest of two Russian sailors over suspected cigarette smuggling, a Greek coast guard spokeswoman said.
On Tuesday, the Greek authorities detained a Togo-flagged cargo ship, which was reportedly carrying 7,900 boxes containing 3.9 million packs of cigarettes from the Egyptian port of Alexandria to the Bulgarian port of Varna. [...]

Tags: cigarettes smuggling, Greece, russia

Croatian police said they arrested at the border Saturday a top former banker wanted for alleged high-risk lending at top state-owned banks in a scandal that saw six other people detained last week, AFP reports.
Josip Protega, former president of the state-controlled Postanska Banka (HPB), was arrested at the Bregana borderpost with Slovenia while returning to [...]

Tags: Corruption, croatia, Josip Protega