CEE crime/spy and somewhat appalling political news of the week (Aug. 11, 2023)
Yep, it’s a round-up like no other—i.e. read between the lines if you dare.
Albania
In what is now a long-running political conflict, Greece has pulled out the big stick over the arrest of Fredi Beleri, who has been accused of vote rigging during his successful election to the mayoral seat of Himara, Albania. Greece has now threatened to wallop any hope of eventual EU accession, with the Greek government’s anger backed by a grass-roots movement calling for Beleri’s release.
The EU at first stayed out of said “discussions,” but European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas has formally protested Beleri’s treatment. Local elections in mid-May saw
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party (SP) take 53 of the 61 local districts in the country, although turnout was at a near record low of 37.7 percent. That said, media reports cited
wire-taps and alleged evidence of an intermediary who aided vote buying, and… exchanged money in the toilets of a bar in Himara. Beleri has denied all charges.
Belarus
Belarus continues to make itself infamous in terms of press rights, and on Aug. 8 Reporters without Borders condemned “a new escalation” in the persecution of journalists there.
Which is saying something, as ever since sham elections three years ago it’s been bad. Plenty bad.
But it is getting worse. According to Reporters Without Borders, “Yulia Davletova, a journalist with Ranak, a local TV channel in the small town of Svietlahorsk, surrendered to the police outside the door of her apartment on Aug. 3 so that her children would not be shocked.”
The release said she “was released later the same day after being made to record a video repenting for her ‘errors’– a humiliating practice that the Belarusian police routinely use with journalists.”
Reporters Without Borders Head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk Jeanne Cavelier sharply criticized the government of Belarus in a statement.
“Three years after Lukashenko's fraudulent reelection in Belarus and his brutal crackdown on criticism, independent media like Ranak are now in the process of disappearing,” Cavelier said. “Ranak was suddenly and summarily eliminated despite its use of a degree of self-censorship, which failed to protect it. As the government continues to step up its censorship, it is now carrying out a purge within its own media of those who fall under the slightest suspicion of a lack of loyalty. RSF denounces this latest round of destructive and authoritarian decisions by a regime that seems increasingly desperate.
The statement also added that “three former state media employees who began freelancing or working for independent media, Kseniya Lutskina, Dzmitry Luksha and Dzmitry Semchanka,” as their desertion from the ranks of government “spokespersons” was immediately punished.
Bulgaria
It took a bit of time to get moving, but the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), under the guidance of new-ish top prosecutor (appointed in 2019) and Romanian legend, Laura Kovesi, is now bringing chickens home to roost with a series of new investigations that began making waves in July (but which will still get mentioned here). And Bulgarians have been high on the list.
Bulgarian authorities have arrested and are now investigating General Toshevo Mayor Velentin D. for energy subsidy fraud. According to a Aug. 9 release by the EPPO, “at the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Sofia (Bulgaria), the mayor of the city of General Toshevo (Dobrich province) was arrested today, in a probe into subsidy fraud involving a project for increasing energy efficiency in social housing.”
The release added that “atissue is a grant obtained by the municipality for a project to increase energy efficiency in multifamily residential buildings, financed by the European Union, to the amount of EUR 169, 000,” and that “according to the evidence, public officials involved in the project, including the mayor, presented untrue information regarding the implementation of the works, which had not been concluded by the established deadline.”
The mayor is currently out of EUR 5,000 bail.
Yet there are apparently bigger fish to fry, as on Aug. 11, the EPPO in Sofia said it “carried out searches [sic] at numerous locations, in an investigation into two projects for the modernisation of the railway infrastructure, worth over EUR 241 mln in EU financing.” It added that more than 100 police officers and agents from Bulgaria’s National Police General Directorate (ГДНП) and Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security (ДАНС) participated in the searches, carried out at 28 locations in the districts of Sofia, Burgas, Varna, Stara Zagora, Smolyan and Pazardzhik.
“On the radar of the EPPO are two projects for the modernisation of the railway infrastructure,” the release said. “The first concerns the section between the cities of Kostenets and Septemvri of the Sofia-Plovdiv railway line, financed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) – previously INEA –, to the amount of more than EUR 130 million.
"The second involves the modernisation of the railway section between Orizovo and Mihaylovo – part of the second phase of the rehabilitation of the Plovdiv-Burgas railway infrastructure –, financed by the Cohesion Fund, under the Operational Programme Transport and Transport infrastructure, to the amount of over EUR 111 mln,” the release added.
It also stated that contractors are suspected of having made, in a short period of time, fictitious money transfers to a chain of hollow companies, which ultimately led to the withdrawal of cash amounts of more than EUR 2.5 mln by individuals with criminal records.
Bulgaria has already seemed high on the list of EPPO’s priorities, with Kovesi paying a visit there in March. In July, the EPPO announced that it was investigating a suspected organised crime group trading luxury cars, an inquiry that was conducted by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Paris (France) and Sofia (Bulgaria), has led to searches carried out in several locations on Tuesday and Wednesday. The suspected criminal group was believed to have been “laundering the proceeds of criminal activity by trading luxury cars, without paying VAT.” Damages to the EU budget were estimated to come to EUR 11 mln.
Protests over the plight of an 18-year-old girl slashed by a boxcutter and beaten by her ex-boyfriend resulted in a new law, signed into reality on Aug. 7, which removed probation for “minor injuries” in such cases and upped potential prison terms to eight years. Bulgaria—like many countries in the region—saw an increase in domestic violence during and following COVID. The case in question received notoriety as the girl was reportedly had her nose broken, was cut hundreds of time and had her hair cut off. At the time, the ex-boyfriend was not arrested as a court treated her woman’s injuries as non-serious.
An Interpol investigation led to the arrest of a Bulgarian accused pedofile, who distributed photos and films that included child-sex abuse. The man ran on-line forums that aided in said distribution, and the investigation is still ongoing.
Czech(ia)
Czech oligarch and businessman extraordinaire is now the largest employer in France, with his companies actually counting 80,000 among personnel, according to La Monde. This fact is neither controversial nor slimy nor a crime. But it is remarkable. And intriguing.
Estonia
While Lithuania and Latvia have decided to take a hard-line toward the portion of the Russian minority in both countries that have refused or been unable to assimilate, Estonia is taking another track, and reportedly it has no plans to deport Russians based on failed language exams, lack of assimilation and eventual non-renewed residence permits. Lithuania has already stated that more than 250 Russian citizens and more than 900 Belarussian fall into this category, and Lativa has taken an even harder stand, estimating that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russians will be deemed a threat to national security and requited to leave in August. How this plays out with regard to EU law… is a question.
Yep, it’s a question all right.
Hungary
An ongoing flap with the US that has cost Hungarians US automatic tourist visas is becoming a bigger problem, as the US has demanded the personal data of some 900,000 Hungarians living abroad—chiefly because massive, long-running identity fraud involving persons who were simply not vetted was apparently the norm for almost a decade. Yet the Hungarian government has said it will not share this data, with the Ministry of the Interior basically falling back on… data security arguments.
As in countries just don’t share this kind of data.
Don’t you just feel the irony?
But the government did say it will look into fraudulent Hungarian passport cases and prosecute where necessary. So that’s something anyway.
Kosovo
While Serbia is apparently back in the bad books of the EU and the US (or at least when it comes to selected politicians—more on that later), Kosovo also has it’s issues, including press freedoms, as pointed out by the European Federation of Journalists. According to a press release, “The (EFJ) has joined its affiliates in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, and four civil society organisations (ECPMF, CPJ, FPU, OBCT) in writing to the Kosovo authorities to express concern about the case of journalist Svetlana Vukmirovic, who has been denied entry to Kosovo in order to carry out her work on multiple occasions since 2018.”
The EFJ highlighted an incident on May 1 when Vukmirovic--while working for public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia—was (again) banned from entering the territory of Kosovo with the explanation that she is considered a threat to public order, internal security, public health, or international relations.
Which the EFJ rightly said was uncalled for.
And really, when you think about it, rather rude.
Montenegro
Montenegro has finally chosen a prime minister, this being Milojko Spajic of the Europe Now Party. Now the process to build a new government will begin—a full eight weeks following general elections. Spajic was nominated Aug. 10 by Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic, also of the Europe Now Party, gained power following the defeat of Milo Djukanoic, a political force for the last three decades. “Mickey” Spajic previously served as minister of finance and social welfare in cabinet of Zdravko Krivokapić from Dec. 4, 2020 to April 28, 2022.
Poland
This week the Radom section of the Polish Centraul Bureau of Investigation (CBSP) announced a bust in which liquidated a pot plantation, seized 442 bushes and detained one person, which may not seem like much, but information gained during the bust led to German services seizing150 kg of 3CMC (clophedrone) worth about PLN 4 million. One person was arrested in Poland, but this is part of a wider investigation that has seen 45 arrested.
Meanwhile, the German EPPO office this week announced it had indicted eight persons involved in VAT fraud stemming from the sale of luxury cars and medical face masks worth EUR 80 mln. The scam ran through bogus companies in Germany, Poland and Czechia, with four men working as the core of the gang to target persons in Poland and Latvia in order to force them to participate in a VAT carousel scam that may still go much wider, as the EPPO is also investigating aspects of the crime ring in France and Croatia.
A rather unexpected headline by Canada’s CBC News noted that the Canadian federal government was “looking into allegations” that Poland fired a diplomat for refusing “to gather information” on former Alberta minister Thomas Lukaszuk.
Lukaszuk has been highly critical of Catholic Priest and leader Tadeusz Rydzyk, who has served as a long-time ally of the Law-and-Justice Party in Poland. Lukazuk lobbied for the Edmonton archdiocese to bar Rydzyk from delivering sermons, but said he did not believe rumours that Poland was gather information on his person, yet he claimed that he received ecrypted mail exchanges that revealed just that. The mails could not be verified by the news station, which instead referred to reported discussions in a Polish parliamentary committee brought up by opposition politicians on the subject.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that 10,000 additional Polish soldiers will be sent to the border of Belarus, with 4,000 to support the Polish Border Guard and the other 6,000 to be held in reserve, ostensibly to counter the threat of Wagner groupings across the border, as well as the fact that the Polish military has also held exercises there.
Romania
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Cluj-Napoca and Iaşi (Romania) announced it was carrying out searches in 17 locations, including public institutions, in an investigation into an EUR 1.6 mln fraud case involving EU and national funds intended to promote employment. The searches were said to have been carried out at the homes of public officials and in six public institutions, four of which located in the county of Bacău and two in the county of Neamț. Eleven individuals will be brought to the EPPO’s Iasi office for questioning.
The public officials are believed to have supported an organised crime group under investigation, by accepting the submission of falsified documents, issuing forged documents and coordinating the formal preparation of submissions, in order to justify payments from EU funds. Searches had already been carried out earlier this year, on 15 February 2023.
Serbia
As reported by Serbia Monthly, Beleaguered Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic—fresh off of seeing his top secret services director sanction by the US and also facing criticism over Serbia’s take on Kosovo by a wide range of European parliamentarians—now faces the spectre of Ukraine moving to recognize Kosovo as an independent state.
And he made it clear he is not down for this at all.
“Ukraine is a friendly country to us,” Vucic said during a press conference, as cited by European Pravda. “[…] If Ukraine recognises the independence of Kosovo, it will lose everything.”
Specifically, Vucic was responding to the aforementioned open letter, which came from more than 50 European MPs, as well as from 10 European foreign affairs committees. The letter complained that the EU and the US were wrongly favoring Serbia in the never-ending Kosovo crises while noting Serbian influence on local elections.
The letter did appear to be very one-sided, and paradoxically it drew conclusions from local elections boycotted by Serbs that were patently incorrect, as the EU and the US have called for Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti to call for new elections in order to fairly represent Serbs. It also omitted Kosovo’s failure to adhere to previous pacts, including a 2013-2014 agreement to create a community of Serb municipalities (CSM), which has never been enacted by any Kosovo government.
Interestingly, Vucic has often used Ukraine’s right to protect its borders in the Kosovo argument, stating that like Ukraine, Serbia’s border integrity was infringed upon during the war in Kosovo and during later agreements and pressures coming from the West. Here, despite Serbia having long and deep ties to Russia, he has veered from the Russian take on the war in Ukraine.
That said, his close ties to controversial Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik, as well as Serbia’s refusal to sanction Russia, has kept him in the firing line, although over the past six weeks the EU and US did appear at times to have shown frustration with Kosovo’s Kurti, having called for Kurti to not only hold new elections, but also to reduce the ethnic-Albanian police forces within Kosovo’s Serb-dominated districts.
Beleaguered Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic—fresh off of seeing his top secret services director sanction by the US and also facing criticism over Serbia’s take on Kosovo by a wide range of European parliamentarians—now faces the spectre of Ukraine moving to recognize Kosovo as an independent state.
And he’s not down for this at all.
“Ukraine is a friendly country to us,” Vucic said during a press conference, as cited by European Pravda. “[…] If Ukraine recognises the independence of Kosovo, it will lose everything.”
Specifically, Vucic was responding to the aforementioned open letter, which came from more than 50 European MPs, as well as from 10 European foreign affairs committees. The letter complained that the EU and the US were wrongly favoring Serbia in the never-ending Kosovo crises while noting Serbian influence on local elections.
The letter did appear to be very one-sided, and paradoxically it drew conclusions from local elections boycotted by Serbs that were patently incorrect, as the EU and the US have called for Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti to call for new elections in order to fairly represent Serbs. It also omitted Kosovo’s failure to adhere to previous pacts, including a 2013-2014 agreement to create a community of Serb municipalities (CSM), which has never been enacted by any Kosovo government.
And interestingly, Vucic has often used Ukraine’s right to protect its borders in the Kosovo argument, stating that like Ukraine, Serbia’s border integrity was infringed upon during the war in Kosovo and during later agreements and pressures coming from the West. Here, despite Serbia having long and deep ties to Russia, he has veered from the Russian take on the war in Ukraine.
That said, his close ties to controversial Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik, as well as Serbia’s refusal to sanction Russia, has kept him in the firing line, although over the past six weeks the EU and US did appear at times to have shown frustration with Kosovo’s Kurti, having called for Kurti to not only hold new elections, but also to reduce the ethnic-Albanian police forces within Kosovo’s Serb-dominated districts.
Russia
A Moscow court sentenced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to another 19 years in prison for Nazism. Navalny could have received the full 20 years, which, apparently in Russian terms, means he got of easy. He is currently serving and 11-and-one-half-year sentence in a penal colony for fraud, extremism, financing extremism, Nazism, illegal activities conducted by an NGO, etc. Reportedly, the new sentence adds in the twist of constant light and more strict visitation rules.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 for breaking the rules of his suspended sentence, which he apparently did when he was sent unconscious and dying to Germany after being poisoned in Russia. Despite what was obviously in store for him, he returned to Russia, was arrested and then was hit with an additional nine-year sentence for fraud.
Upon receiving the sentence, Navalny said, as cited by a variety of media, including The Guardian: “I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime.”
Yet still he called on Russians to resist, saying the government was trying “to intimidate you, not me.”
Behold the man, friends. Behold the man.
Otherwise...
Have a great weekend!