US: Feds’ new rules will fight terrorism with anti-OC measures

U.S. federal agents will now use the same methods to ferret out terrorists as they use to fight organized crime, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said at a conference in Oregon last week.

The new rules, which will take effect this autumn, will for example allow FBI agents to cultivate terror informants in the same way that they use informants to take down organized crime leaders. This from The Oregonian, which covered the conference:

Previously, terrorism suspects were arrested and prosecuted when caught. Now, federal agents are more likely to monitor them as long as possible to see whether they leave clues about their network. When suspects are brought in, agents will not immediately read them their Miranda rights but try to persuade them to turn over useful intelligence or gain their cooperation.

(FBI counterterrorism official Art) Cummings described the case of an Ohio trucker who was casing New York landmarks for possible attack. The easiest and perhaps safest approach would be to arrest him immediately, but FBI agents instead monitored him closely with bugs to find co-conspirators.

Cummings, Mukasey and terrorism prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald all emphasized that their agencies would pay extra attention to civil liberties after the new rules go into effect.

Czech ombudsman: Mafia, corruption involved in visa handling

Bribery is common when foreigners apply for permanent visas in the Czech Republic, and mafia structures have a hand in the visas and permanent-registry permits, the country’s ombudsman said last week.

Otakar Motejl said he began receiving complaints five years ago, but now the situation at Prague ’s foreign police inspectorate and at consulates in Ukraine , Russia and Vietnam is “intolerable.” Meanwhile, the numbers of foreigners living in the Czech Republic has grown to nearly half a million (just over 410,000 to be precise).

"We are talking about places where foreigners have their first experience with the Czech authorities. The country should present the culture of a three-star hotel here and not a dormitory," said the ombudsman.

Media rushes to blame Germany shootings on Italian mob

The shooting murders of three people at an Italian ice-cream parlor some 20 miles from Frankfurt last week prompted the press to note that the shootings could be a copycat of the crime last August that killed six Italians outside a Duisberg pizzeria. This from the Times of London :

The attack occurred in Rüsselsheim – home to the Opel car factory – where many Italian workers have settled, establishing pizzerias and cafes with their savings. Three men, described as being of “Mediterranean appearance,” approached the ice cream salon just before dusk and fired rapidly at a group of three male customers. A woman standing nearby was also killed, but it was still unclear last night whether she was a target or was gunned down by accident.

The shadow of the Calabrian mafia may thus again be stretching over the industrial heartland of Germany . A few days ago, Italian police arrested Paolo Nirta, the acting head of the San Luca clan, a stronghold of the Calabrian gangs known as the ‘Ndrangheta. Nirta is suspected of involvement in the killing of six Italians in a pizzeria in Duisburg in western Germany almost exactly a year ago. That was regarded as a vengeance killing: Nirta’s sister-in-law, Maria Strangio was shot down on her doorstep just before Christmas 2006.

A major man hunt was underway with helicopters and tracker dogs deployed around much of the surrounding area. The assassins were said by witnesses to have both pistols and knives. Plainly though, the ice-cream murders may be part of an elaborate tit-for-tat. Somebody betrayed Nirta to the police last week. That usually triggers a revenge attack.

Other press reported that the victims were indeed Mediterranean looking, but their identification revealed that they were not Italians, but Turks – so probably not members of the clan-based Calabrian mafia.

Whether these latest murders in Germany are the job of the mob may be debatable; prosecutors this autumn will be trying to prove that last year’s murders are indeed ‘Ndrangheta-related. Nearly 60 suspected Mafiosi will go on trial in southern Italy in October and November, facing charges of criminal association, homicide and illegal arms possession. Another alleged Calabrian mob head was jailed in Canada last week and will stay there until his hearing rules on whether he’ll be deported to Italy .

These trials and arrests, welcome news though they may be, simply aren’t on for some “bunker bosses” who literally hide underground throughout Italy . The Carabinieri have raided 15 such bunkers this year, and say that the ‘Ndrangheta bosses are more than able to run their cocaine businesses while remaining in hiding. The article can be read here.

In Camorra news, Spanish police arrested an alleged Neapolitan mob boss who’d been sentenced to 23 years for a 1980s double homicide last week. Patrizio Bosti was arrested in a restaurant in Catalonia on Saturday with help from Italian police. He was not armed when arrested, but was found to be carrying €24,000 in cash. Italian police also seized goods worth €25 million from two elderly brothers thought to be associated with Sicily’s La Cosa Nostra last week.

Stop the presses: Report says Siemens lax on anti-corruption

Siemens, the German engineering behemoth that’s been wracked by a public slush-fund-and-corruption scandal for nearly two years, apparently had less-than stellar anti-corruption procedures, according to a report by Spiegel magazine.

A network of 400 businesses that advocate good company governance found “considerable structural shortcomings” in Seimens anti-corruption rules, stated a confidential document from Siemens’s lawyers.

(The law firm) pinpointed a conflict of interest in the company’s auditing office tasked with preventing corruption and protecting the group if corruption cases were revealed, the magazine said in its edition to be published Monday.

Steps to improve the way the auditing office works also met with "considerable opposition by management," it added.

With its 80 members, the audit department was understaffed compared to its U.S. competitor General Electric (GE) which employs 300 people in its compliance department, according to an internal 2005 study quoted by the magazine.

The lack of auditors is hardly a shocker: This is a company that has acknowledged funneling $2 billion into various funds to obtain foreign contracts, and acknowledged that the practice was widespread across its numerous divisions.

OECD: UK falls short on corruption

In other bribery news, Europe’s wealthy countries are slamming Great Britain for not cracking down on bribery. While other countries are vigorously pursuing their own dubious multi-national corporations, Britain is not going after its own, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s anti-bribery working group warned London in a letter.

The message suggests London can expect a tough time at the next meeting of the OECD anti-bribery group in October, where members could take the embarrassing and unprecedented step of pushing for Britain to be suspended.

One person who has seen the letter said it was “particularly undiplomatic” and laid out the “full menu” of criticisms about Britain ’s performance on tackling bribery by its businesses and nationals overseas.

The letter, signed on behalf of the anti-bribery group’s members by Mark Pieth, its chairman, was sent days before Angel Gurría, OECD secretary-general, visited London in June, people familiar with its contents said.

The letter attacked Britain over its failure to bring a single overseas bribery case or to deliver on a years-old pledge to update its anti-corruption laws. It also raised concerns that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) would downgrade its commitment to tackling corporate foreign bribery because of plans for it to focus more on public education and consumer crimes such as share scams.

Mexico police killings highlight difficulty of OC, corruption fight

The killings of four police officers in Mexico Aug. 11 show that Mexico is having problems in its fight against drug-related organized crime and official corruption. Though this particular incident is a purely Mexican problem, it shows that any country trying to do the same faces the same difficulties. This from Bloomberg:

(President Felipe) Calderon pledged to root out police corruption during appearances over the past week after public outrage over the kidnapping and slaying of the 14-year-old son of a businessman, allegedly at the hands of police. Ending police involvement with organized crime is difficult because of low salaries and threats to the lives of honest cops, said Jorge Chabat, a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City .

``It’s hard to fight narco corruption because police have positive incentives -- money -- and also negative incentives — they’ll kill you if you don’t go along,’’ Chabat said.

The universal idea that can be taken from this horrible incident and Mexico’s other troubles of late is that if your anti-organized crime police are themselves close to OC figures and leaking them information, that’s not optimal.