6 Mafia bosses arrested in Italy
Bosses of several Italian Mafia rings have been arrested for trying to monopolize freight transport market in Italy’s south.
Dutch crime boss Willem Holleeder freed
Willem Holleeder, a Dutch criminal notorious for the 1983 kidnapping of beer tycoon Freddy Heineken, has been released from jail.
01/15/2012
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: crime boss, Dutch, Willem Holleeder
Europe: Failure To Curb Organised Crime In Kosovo Muddies EU Image
The fact that the European Union’s largest police mission to Kosovo has failed to collar any leading suspects on organised crime even after four years has prompted people to question its efficacy as well as the dependability of Kosovo’s leaders.
01/12/2012
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Kosovo, Organised Crime
Brutal Bulgarian Criminal Busted in UK on ’The Sun’ Tip-Off
A brutal Bulgarian gangster, notorious for slicing off victims’ fingers and ears, was caught in London on an alert from an investigation of The Sun.
Italy: Police uncovered €50 billion in hidden taxable income
Italy’s tax police have identified 7,500 Italians who last year hid around 50 billion euros in taxable income, according to the country’s tax police, the Guardia di Finanza.
Watford road is one of most crime-ridden streets in England
A Watford road has been named fourth in a poll of the top 50 worst crime streets in England.
EU directive for crime victims undermines Armed Forces, warns MoD
The work of the Armed Forces could be undermined by a European Directive that the Coalition has chosen to adopt, the Ministry of Defence has warned.
12/11/2011
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Armed Forces, EU, victims
Naples shopkeepers rise up against Camorra mafia
In the gangster-ridden streets of Naples, any word against the criminal syndicate is dangerous, but local business including butchers, bakeries and grocers have summoned the courage to try and loosen the Camorra’s stranglehold on the city.
«We decided we couldn’t go on,» said Salvatore Russo, a grocer in the city centre.
«They would come by two or three times a year and demand money. Those who didn’t pay up were shot in the legs, or beaten up, or stolen from,» he said.
The bag men demanded up to 1,500 euros (£1,249) three times a year – a major cost for small businesses struggling through a deep economic crisis.
«The fear is huge because they threaten you, your shop, your family,» said Raffaele Ferrara, a grocer in the city centre who lives in fear after he and around 300 others decided to say no this year after decades of oppression.
Should the age of criminal responsibility be raised?
A report by the Royal Society claims the age of criminal responsibility in England, Wales and Northern Ireland could be «unreasonably low» considering neuroscientific evidence of how slowly the brains of children mature.
Criminal inquiry adds up to more problems
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Greece’s understaffed new statistical agency has been struggling for months to produce high-quality figures needed by European Union and International Monetary Fund experts preparing the country’s next round of fiscal and structural reform.
A criminal investigation focused on its director, Andreas Georgiou, will only compound the problems.
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Mr Georgiou, a former International Monetary Fund official, has already appeared informally before a junior financial prosecutor investigating accusations by a fellow statistician that he «betrayed the country’s interests» by inflating the 2009 budget deficit figures.
Mr Georgiou is due to attend a formal hearing next month conducted by Grigoris Peponis, the senior prosecutor for financial crime, who was appointed this year after the EU and IMF pressured the government to crack down harder on tax evasion and other economic crimes.
A second case, filed by the Athens lawyers’ union, also demands a criminal investigation on the grounds that the «inflation» of the deficit «damaged Greece’s national sovereignty and violated the constitution».
The furore over the deficit figure highlights the embarrassment felt by conservative and socialist politicians — the government changed hands two years ago — over their responsibility for racking up a eurozone record budget deficit of 15,8 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009. That compares with an earlier figure of 13,4 per cent of GDP, less than that of Ireland, produced a few months before the Hellenic Statistical Agency, or Elstat, started operating in August 2010.
But with Greece already embarked on a harsh austerity programme, the extra 2,4 percentage points translated into further tough measures that might have otherwise have been avoided, according to one member of the lawyers’ union who declined to be named.
«The country was already in deep crisis, the head of Elstat should have put Greece’s interests ahead of an issue about numbers which is always going to be open to debate,» said the lawyer, who helped prepare the case against Mr Georgiou.
Members of the parliamentary budget committee blasted Mr Georgiou last week at a hearing to discuss a new regulation on the operation and management of the agency.
Mr Georgiou’s two deputies, who were promoted from the former state statistical service, could face similar charges. Morale at the agency has suffered with middle-level staff fearing that they could face court action for signing off on regular statistical surveys.
Mr Georgiou denies any wrongdoing. His team at Elstat has already sent almost 80 files defending the deficit figure and their methodology to the prosecutor’s office ahead of the December 12 hearing.
The accusations against him by professor Zoe Georganta, a UK-trained statistician who teaches at Greece’s University of Macedonia, were made after she was sacked along with other members of Elstat’s board by Evangelos Venizelos, the finance minister.
Prof Georganta and other board members had demanded that they should jointly approve figures on the public finances before they were sent to Eurostat, in defiance of Elstat’s new methodology and of EU practice.
11/23/2011
— Filed under: Crime
Tags: Andreas Georgiou, investigation
