It is said in the communication that Zarubica was arrested in Blace near Kursumlija. There has been an arrest warrant issued against him on the basis of a four-year prison sentence he has to serve upon the final and enforceable judgment of the Belgrade Higher Court,

On the arrest, Zarubica “was using forged documents on the name of Zoran Papovic”, based on which he was living in the territory of Niš and Leskovac, where he was involved also in trade in cultural objects found during illegal archeological diggings in various locations in Serbia”.

“During 1999, three criminal reports were raised against him”, it is said in the communication of the Interior Ministry, specifying that “in only one action against Zarubica in Resnik in December 1999, 46 girls from Romania and Moldova were found, as well as DEM 180,000”.

The police reports that Zarubica, known in public as the Balkan Human Trafficking King, was on the run for two months in 2003, when the police was searching for him for mediation in prostitution, reminding that he was arrested then during the Saber action in Batajnica.

In 2004 and 2005, the Higher Court in Belgrade “sentenced him, together with another 11 persons, for various trafficking offences, because he was involved in organizing prostitution and illegal deprivation of liberty of at least 11 Moldova nationals”.

In November 2008, the Anti Mafia Court in Bologna (Italy) sentenced him to the prison term of 17 years and a fine of EUR 150,000 for human trafficking and mafia alliance, it is added in the communication

March 11. 2010

At the moment of the arrest the suspects were carrying drug packages – 2.200 kilos- inside a vehicle on a motorway. According to the Spanish National Police other four members of the network have been arrested in France. In total, the operation allowed for the apprehension of 147.000 Euros, two weapons and six vehicles.

Several traffickers detained in Fuengirola

Thanks to a joint operation with agents from the French OCRTIS – Central Office for the Fight against Illegal Trafficking – the Police found a place in Fuengirola where a group of French hashish traffickers presumedly kept big quantities of drugs, which was ready for selling to a specific client. Police sources have claimed that it seems the gang used rental cars and other vehicles with French number plates for their trips.

In fact, investigators found a vehicle with a French number plate and a rental van close to the place where they kept the drug. (…)

Operation in France

At the same time, the French Police started the final phase of Operation Elephant, which had been ongoing since the beginning of 2009. It culminated with the arrest of four individuals and the apprehension of 147.000 Euro, two money-counting machines, a shotgun along with its charger and ammunitions and two luxury vehicles.

March 10, 2010

Original titles: “Desarticulan una red que transportaba hachís desde Málaga a París”

Translated by FLARE Communication and Information department

Photo: Associated Press

Twenty people were arrested in Palermo for alleged drug-trafficking, extortion and usury, according to a statement by Italian police on Wednesday. Three members of the Gambino crime family were arrested in New York and North Carolina and charged with extortion, obstruction of justice and concealment of assets in bankruptcy, according to a separate statement by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Three more people were arrested in Miami on charges of money laundering and obstruction of justice, said Special Agent Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman in Miami.

Prosecutors say the link between U.S. and Italian groups was Italian national Roberto Settineri, who they allege acted as an intermediary between a Palermo-based clan and the New York-based Gambino and Colombo families. Mr. Settineri was arrested hours before he was scheduled to fly from Miami to Italy and charged with money laundering and obstruction of justice, the U.S. district attorney’s statement said.

Italian prosecutors haven’t yet charged those arrested in Italy. They say they haven’t requested the extradition of Mr. Settineri. Efforts to reach a lawyer representing Mr. Settineri were unsuccessful.

The arrests mark the latest chapter in a joint campaign by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Italian authorities to crack down on one of Italy’s most powerful organized crime syndicates. Since the 2005 launch of the joint investigation, known as Project Pantheon, Italian and U.S. investigators have made deep inroads into the Sicilian Mafia, disrupting the mob’s command structure with arrests of top bosses.

Although the Mafia remains a powerful force in Italy, the Sicilian mob has lately been overshadowed by syndicates with less-centralized command structures, such as the Camorra, a Naples-based syndicate, and the ‘Ndrangheta, which is based in the toe of the Italian peninsula.

Wednesday’s arrests in Palermo targeted members of the Santa Maria di Gesu, a Palermo-based crime family that has allegedly filled the Mafia’s power vacuum, according to police. Anti-mafia prosecutors in Palermo allege that members of Santa Maria di Gesu operate citywide extortion network, requiring shopkeepers to pay protection money or face violent reprisals.

Shopkeepers who have refused to pay have seen their stores burned down or sealed shut with super glue, Italian police said. One shopkeeper who refused to protection money was shot five times in August 2009 and survived the attack, Italian police said in their Wednesday statement.

Mr. Settineri regularly traveled between the U.S. and Palermo to meet with top members of the Santa Maria di Gesu family, Italian police alleged. As part of the investigation, police also seized “significant quantities” of cocaine and hashish in the Southern Italian region Calabria, according to the statement.

March 10, 2010

There have been a number of outspoken attacks against them since the start of the year, when a Russian businessman was blamed for killing a taxi driver in Morjim village, in north Goa, sparking public protests.

Others have voiced concerns about a rise in crime, against a backdrop of long-standing fears that the Russian mafia is using the former Portuguese colony as a base for money-laundering, vice rings and arms and drug-running. On the main approach road to Morjim — dubbed “Little Russia” by locals because of the high number of Russians now living there — it’s not hard to see the extent to which the new arrivals have left their mark.

A giant advertising hoarding for holiday properties is written entirely in the Cyrillic alphabet. A short scooter ride away down narrow lanes, Russian is a familiar sound on the sandy beaches and in the popular bars and restaurants, where menus are also in the language.

“For us, English is a major problem, as most Russians hardly speak it. It’s really good to see a Russian around,” said Morjim bar owner Andrei Medvedev.

But for native Raju Mandrekar, who runs a small shop in the village, it’s a bind. “They hardly speak English,” he said. “So when they arrive in Goa they search for fellow Russians. All roads lead to our village.”

Despite being increasingly reliant on Russian rubles, many locals complain that Russians can obtain licences to run beach-side bars much more easily than Indians and have called for their influence to be curbed. “We will not allow the Russians to run beach shacks from next season onwards,” said Ranakar Shetgaonkar, a sarpanch or village elder.

Lawmaker Shantaram Naik, from the ruling Congress party, backs that stance, saying many Russian businesses have flouted laws restricting the purchase of land and property by foreigners. He has vowed to take up the matter personally with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to prevent Goans being deprived of their livelihoods.

Ralf de Souza, president of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa, an umbrella group of tour operators, has revived claims about alleged underworld infiltration which could harm the state’s “family destination” image. “The Russian mafia has not affected the state’s image yet but if it escalates than it will certainly affect the business,” he said recently.

Naik even condemned Russian tourists for offending conservative sensibilities in Goan society, which despite its free-wheeling reputation among foreigners can still be strait-laced.

“Some Russians move totally naked,” he said after speaking to villagers. “Besides corrupting minds of locals they leave a horrifying impression on schoolchildren. “Russian authorities in India have not been silent themselves, accusing the Goa state government and law enforcement agencies of not doing enough to protect their citizens after a string of high-profile attacks.

They include alleged rapes of a nine-year-old girl in January and a 25-year-old woman in December. Goa-based lawyer Vikram Varma, who acts for the Russian consulate in Mumbai, dismissed claims Russians were sullying the tourist destination or involved in serious organised crime.

Only 15 Russians were implicated in allegations of illegal land and property deals in 2007 out of a total of 435 cases, while of all the Russians who visited Goa in 2008, only two were arrested for drugs possession, he said. “The rest of the people who have been charged, maybe 10 to 15, have been facing charges for not wearing helmets, overspeeding or not reporting the loss of a passport,” he said.

Instead, he added, the local economy was being enhanced by the increasing Russian presence. “With 45,000 Russians coming in, they’re making nearly 400 crores (four billion rupees, 88 million dollars) for the Goan economy in terms of the tourism sector,” he said.

“This percolates down the line — to the cab drivers, the bar tenders and hotel owners, the works. Forty percent of occupants at five-star hotels in Goa are Russian. They just come here to relax and go back.”

March 9, 2010

Gooi Kok Seng, aka Delpiero, 44, is wanted by US authorities to face charges of illegal possession of a data access device, illegal dealing in a data access device and hacking into a computer. A source from the Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department said they were waiting for a report from their Thai counterparts.

It is understood that Malaysian police were aware of Gooi’s arrest in January. “Gooi was a prominent member of a credit card fraud gang which had been operating in the US for the past three years,” the source disclosed.

“The group is alleged to have stolen credit card information from victims patronising restaurants and major department stores in the US. They then sold the data to organised crime syndicates in Asia who produced counterfeit credit cards.”

Gooi was believed to have been on the run for almost a year after an arrest warrant was issued by the US government. He fled to Thailand and settled down in a remote area in Pak Kret, Nonthaburi, where he married a Thai woman. However, intensive intelligence gathering by US authorities led to his whereabouts. A team of US Secret Service agents and the Thai police raided his house in January.

Last week, the Criminal Court in Thailand ordered Gooi’s extradition following a request by the US. After concluding from evidence the suspect was the man wanted by the Americans, the court ordered him to be detained for 30 days before his extradition to the US.

In a statement issued by the US State Department in August 2008, it was revealed that the Secret Service uncovered what was believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever in the country involving 11 individuals. The three-year probe uncovered the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers from nine major US retailers.

The 11 were charged in Boston and San Diego with three identified as US citizens, three from Ukraine, two from China, one each from Estonia, Belarus and Malaysia. They were charged with numerous crimes including conspiracy, computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft.

Original title: “Malaysian linked to $210m card scam”

Colombian police, in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), are now focusing their efforts on the FARC’s seven drug kingpins, El Tiempo reported Monday.

Evidence found on the seized computers of FARC leaders “Raul Reyes” and “Edgar Tovar” has helped authorities to map out the entire structure of the FARC’s narco-trafficking dealings.

El Tiempo claims that a police report on the FARC’s structure includes over 60 emails that Tovar exchanged with the FARC’s leadership and the heads of various fronts, containing information about drug shipments and alliances with gang leaders and mafia groups across the country.

The report traces the routes and strategies for the FARC to move drugs across the country, “The 48th Front receives the drugs in Putumayo, the 30th Front protects its movement from Cauca until Cañon de Garrapatas (Choco), and the 57th Front takes the drugs towards Uraba, thanks to a non-agression agreement that they made with neo-paramilitary group “Los Paisas,” a police intelligence official told El Tiempo.

The El Tiempo article stipulates that due to the increased reliance on drug money by the FARC, the main challenge for authorities now will be to cut off its life-blood; the ability to control the drug trade. The evidence pulled from Tovar’s computer “is clearly the main proof that the FARC is a cartel,” a DEA source told El Tiempo.

Authorities indicate that they will be going after the FARC’s money-laundering operations which have been outsourced to neighboring countries.

Also revealed recently is information showing that the FARC have moved into the marijuana business as well. The marijuana operation is headed by FARC leader “Sargento Pascuas,” who is the only living founder of the FARC, and head of its 6th Front in Cauca.

Cauca has been the victim of heavy fighting recently between the FARC and authorities. Two weeks ago, anti-narcotics police captured a record-setting 20-ton shipment of marijuana in the Cauca municipality of El Palo.

The El Tiempo report echoes the conclusions of a Colombian police intelligence report, seen by Radio Caracol in February, which claims that at least eight units of the FARC are now engaged solely in the production and trafficking of cocaine, and are not involved in the fight against the government or in terrorist acts.

March 8, 2010

Photo: Getty Images

But on Twitter, reports of brazen gunbattles throughout the city surfaced almost minute-by-minute. Tweeters created .Reynosafollow for those following or reportedly caught up in the violence to exchange details. A hashtag is used to narrow down tweets on a particular topic in the microblogging site.

Some asked for advice on when it was safe to come out. Others highlighted specific streets that were especially dangerous. “I have a special interest in what happens in Mexico as a result of crime,” said Gabriel Regino, 40, a criminology professor at a university in Mexico City.

Regino was an active participant on the trending .Reynosafollow topic when gunbattles erupted in the city on February 25. He said despite being in Mexico City at the time, some of his students in Reynosa were near the shootouts. He relayed their information on Twitter.

“I’m convinced that a well-informed society takes better actions,” Regino said. “I was surprised to see how successful Twitter was in the use of the ‘Green Revolution’ [Green Movement in Iran], so in 2010, I began using Twitter.” Some residents said social media has become a safety measure.

“We use Twitter to protect ourselves as citizens,” said a 17-year-old Reynosa resident, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of cartels. “The governor tells us it’s our psychosis, but at night the city is empty. The authorities here practically don’t exist.”

In parts of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where fighting between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel has flared in the past two weeks, residents say local authorities have not done enough to stop the bloodshed. In recent weeks, the two cartels wrestled for control in those areas, launching an offensive that terrorized residents.

In Reynosa, CNN spoke to residents by phone said if it wasn’t for the international media, no one would pay attention to their plight. The Reynosa police department and the governor’s office did not return multiple calls by CNN over the course of two days.

With elections coming up in Tamaulipas, residents say officials are slow to acknowledge bloodshed because they are concerned about protecting the state’s image. Frustrated by what they consider a slow response, some have turned to the Web.

On YouTube, a recently-posted video titled “Cartel De Twitter” gives guidance on how to create anonymous Twitter accounts so that users can announce where cartels are operating. It gives examples of how to circulate information to a wider audience by using hashtags and how to direct tweets to legitimate journalists on Twitter. The link has more than 5,000 views.

In Ciudad Juarez, which has become synonymous with the Mexican drug war, civic leaders use Facebook to mobilize. On February 13, a mass demonstration against the violence — after a visit to Juarez by President Felipe Calderon — was organized in part through Facebook.

“This really shows how far-ranging the use of social media goes and how quickly information can spread,” said Ben Parr, a social media expert and co-editor of Mashable, a social media news blog. However, Parr cautions, the use of social media is not all positive.

“Technology and social media can be used for good or evil. We’ve seen it on both sides,” Parr said. Earlier this year, a Mexican lawmaker pushed to censor social media networks such as Twitter, suggesting cartels use the service to locate targets. CNN cannot independently authenticate the use of social media by the cartels.

But in some instances, videos purportedly posted by cartels have shown tortured hostages, gagged and bound, moments from execution. Narcocorridos, Mexican folk songs glorifying the lives of organized criminals, also receive thousands of views on YouTube.

Cartels operating in affected cities are confiscating cell phones to avoid recording of gunbattles, according to residents. But those savvy to social media are ensuring that word still gets out.

March 8, 2010

Original title: “Residents use social media to fight organized crime in Mexico”

Without citing its sources, Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung said that if tax offences were reclassified in money laundering, lawyers, tax advisors, accountants and bankers who are implicated in such offences could get up to three years in jail.

In addition, the country’s cherished banking secrecy law would not hold in arguing against assistance to foreign tax authorities, as the rule is lifted in money laundering cases. Switzerland came under pressure from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2009, when it put Switzerland on a ‘grey list’ of tax havens for not being cooperative enough.

Photo: Keystone

To go off this list, Bern had to negotiate a series of accords on sharing tax information. Swiss banks have been hit by a series of disputes with several countries, including the United States, Germany and France, over allegations that their nationals have hidden funds in Swiss bank accounts to evade taxes.

On Thursday, the Swiss government vowed to reject undeclared assets from foreigners, in a move to counter tax evasion and clean up the reputation of Alpine state’s banking sector.

March 1, 2010

Read more:

- Were Swiss outmanoeuvred in tax evasion scrum? (Swissinfo, 28 February 2010)

David Bayever, deputy chair of the country’s Central Drug Authority, said local officials had raised fears girls would be encouraged to work the streets to target tourists in the country where around 16 per cent of the population is feared to be living with HIV. He said: “It’s horrific and very concerning”.

“We’ve been told by event organisers that they are aware of about 40,000 new prostitutes being recruited to come into the country for the World Cup. “The women are expected to travel from countries all over the world, especially from eastern Europe.

“Money talks, and if you’re a sex worker then there is going to be money in South Africa in 2010.” Mr Bayever raised the concerns at a meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, where policies to limit the new arrivals were discussed.

He said: “We’re received assurances that the borders will up passport control checks on dubious individuals, and that profiling and screening will be in place. “The figure of 40,000 women was raised by our colleagues in KwaZulu-Natal, where the coastal ports are seen as a particularly high-risk area for illegal arrivals.”

Experts also fear many local children could be lured into sex work when they enjoy a four week national school holiday during the World Cup. Mr Bayever said: “Kids are going to be on holiday for all that time. There is no doubt that they will be targeted to become prostitutes.

“Children from poor rural families will be given a carrot by criminals who tell them they will have a job if they come to the big city. “Before long they will be engaged in sex work, a trade that is totally interlinked with substance abuse.”

The CDA, a body that advises the South African government, has also warned many prostitutes who arrive in South Africa will have been trafficked to the country by an underworld controlled by drug rings. Jacob Zuma, in Britain on an official visit, has vowed crime would be kept to a minimum during the World Cup, and that England fans would be safe.

Around 450,000 foreign fans are expected to visit South Africa for the World Cup, including around 25,000 from England.

March 5, 2010

Plastic bags filled with garbage covered the Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples. In the suburbs, piles of garbage grew like tumors along arterial roads, and at night the air was heavy with the pungent odor of burning dumps. More than 1,100 tons of new waste was being added to the piles every day.

An ongoing problem with waste disposal reached a crisis point in Naples in 2008. Photo: DPA

The garbage had to be removed. But how? And where would it go? That was the question that worried Lorenzo Miracle, the manager of an Italian logistics company.

Meanwhile, the streets were spic and span in Großpösna, a town in the eastern German state of Saxony. It is the site of the Cröbern Central Waste Treatment Plant, a monument to German thoroughness that cost at least €100 million ($135 million) to build and includes sewage treatment basins and a decorative pond. It is one of Europe’s most advanced facilities, a garbage dump for the 21st century.

But the Cröbern treatment plant was apparently bigger than it needed to be. Residents of the state were not producing enough garbage to keep the plant running at full capacity. It needed more waste. But who was going to provide it? That was the problem faced by Konrad Doruch, the waste treatment plant’s chief solid-waste procurer.

Each of the two men, Mr. Miracle and Mr. Doruch, had something the other man wanted. They reached an agreement, and beginning in April 2007, freight trains loaded with waste from Naples started running north to Großpösna almost daily.

‘Unprecedented’

It was an arrangement that seemed to benefit both sides. The only problem was that it apparently involved several illegal activities, including the unauthorized handling of hazardous waste, bribery and the establishment of a criminal organization.

Unfortunately for Doruch, the solid-waste procurer in Saxony, the Italian police targeted him in a large-scale investigation dubbed “Operation Ecoballe.” The investigators, hoping to get the better of the Neapolitan Mafia, known as the Camorra, intercepted hundreds of phone calls. Companies tied to the Camorra arrange for the transport and illegal disposal of waste, both in Italy and abroad.

In late November, the Italian investigators expanded their efforts to German soil. Prosecutors and police officers searched the waste processing plant in Großpösna and other waste processing and recycling companies in Saxony and the neighboring state of Saxony-Anhalt. The authorities were looking for anything associated with solid waste coming from Italy, including shipping documents, contracts and invoices. The investigation revolved around 150,000 tons of solid waste that had been transported to Germany in 200 freight trains, which apparently should never have been allowed to cross the Alps.

The Italian-German solid-waste profiteering scandals provide insights into a booming industry. According to investigations by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), up to two million tons of household waste have already been dumped illegally in German waste dumps and former landfills. “The extent of the solid-waste profiteering activities is quantitatively and qualitatively unprecedented,” and has been completely underestimated by government agencies and politicians, according to an internal BKA study conducted with the goal of putting shady solid-waste deals on the agenda at the next conference of environment ministers in June.

Illegal Household Waste

The case of the Cröbern treatment plant shows that it is not always shady demolition companies and landfill operators who are treating law and order the way they treat waste. Even semi-governmental businesses have been suspected of acting illegally in extreme circumstances.

The circumstances were indeed extreme in April 2006, when local politicians in the eastern city of Leipzig met to discuss the crisis faced by the treatment plant operator, the Western Saxon Waste Disposal and Recycling Company (WEV). The company, a majority of which is owned by the city of Leipzig and the surrounding counties, was “in acute economic difficulties, which could ultimately jeopardize its continued existence,” the agenda of the meeting reads.

The WEV lost €4.5 million in 2005 alone, and it was time for management to come up with a plan. Decision-makers were in demand, men like Konrad Doruch, a Saxon with a pronounced dialect who has made a career for himself in the waste management business. At first, he was in charge of safety and fire protection at the waste treatment plant, and he was later promoted to the job of sales director.

Between 2003 and 2006, Doruch successfully arranged to have more than 200,000 tons of solid waste shipped from Italy. It was premium material for the plant in Großpösna, including slag from an aluminum plant in Novara and insulation material containing asbestos from Verona. State authorities had granted the Cröbern treatment plant special permission to dispose of the hazardous waste.

The WEV, losing money and lacking enough solid waste to keep its plant running efficiently, sent Doruch back to Italy. This time, however, he didn’t procure industrial waste from the north, but household waste from the south, from Naples and the surrounding Campania region, where the Camorra all but controls the waste disposal business.

If what the investigators claim is true, that was when the WEV’s methods became illegal. Household garbage from Campania cannot simply be exported to Germany like olive oil or wine.

Part 2: Afoul of German Treatment Laws

Since 2005, even German domestic household garbage can no longer be dumped into landfills. Instead, it has to be incinerated or subjected to a complicated procedure, which involves sorting and crushing the garbage, and then removing as much bacteria as possible. German authorities only approve garbage imports if the waste has been properly treated first.

Despite these restrictions, the Saxon and Italian solid-waste dealers tried anyway. Beginning in April 2007, freight trains filled with household waste began departing from the Maddaloni-Marcianise depot about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Naples, to be unloaded the next day in Großpösna, 1,500 kilometers away.

Minor incidents like the one that happened on April 26, when a special unit of the Carabinieri, Italy’s national police force, ordered foul-smelling containers opened, could not put a stop to the German-Italian garbage connection.

According to the freight documents, the containers were supposed to contain pre-treated waste, or intermediate products in the recycling chain. Instead, the Carabinieri found ordinary household waste from southern Italian kitchens, and seized eight containers. But by the next day, the trains were running again.

Under this system, the contents of 7,500 containers ended up in eastern Germany. It was apparently an extremely lucrative arrangement for the WEV, which is said to have been paid €16 million, or €86 per ton. The politicians from Leipzig and the surrounding areas must have been pleased, now that their prestigious project was finally paying off. Their company, almost bankrupt a year ago, was in the black.

It appears that authorities in Saxony were not particularly interested in the nature of the solid waste being processed in their treatment plants. Investigators believe they can prove that Sales Director Doruch simply lied about the contents of many shipments and promptly shipped the bulk of the waste, a total of 107,000 tons, to treatment facilities run by Andreas Böhme in neighboring Saxony-Anhalt. Böhme, an automotive body specialist by trade, did not have a permit to process solid waste from Italy, but he did own a waste shredder. In Saxony-Anhalt, the solid waste from Naples was apparently re-classified once again, this time as “sorted mineral waste,” which qualified it for disposal.

‘A Fixed Group’ of Criminals

Some of it wound up in a landfill in the town of Freyburg-Zeuchfeld, in Saxony-Anhalt, which was all but shut down in the spring of 2009, after state environmental inspectors had found 300,000 tons of illegally dumped waste at the landfill.

The prosecutors believe they know who is behind the garbage shipments. From the very beginning, says one investigator, “a fixed group of German and Italian criminals” planned to “dispose of the garbage from Campania illegally, because most of it was untreated, in the region of Saxony-Anhalt.”

Böhme denies this. His attorney, Steffen Segler, says that his client treated the solid waste from the WEV “properly.” Konrad Doruch also rejects accusations that he was involved in illegal garbage profiteering. Doruch, like his former boss at WEV, has since left the company.

The new man at the head of the waste treatment plant has hired an auditing firm to conduct an internal investigation, the results of which will be presented to the WEV Supervisory Board in mid-March. It’s still unclear whether, and when, prosecutors in Leipzig and Halle (the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt) will file charges.

Their counterparts in Naples appear to be further along in prosecuting the case. In the fall of 2008, they presented Lorenzo Miracle with an arrest warrant, and two dozen other managers at the treatment plant and officials were temporarily arrested. They all stand accused of being involved in illegal garbage profiteering.

It almost seemed as if these efforts had put an end to the international garbage dealers’ work. But that impression is deceptive. In December, another 100 tons of fresh garbage was discovered in a waste dump in Saxony-Anhalt. It was from Italy.

March 3, 2010

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan