Crime/spy and somewhat appalling political news of the week (July 28, 2023)
Yep, it’s a round-up like no other—i.e. read between the lines if you dare.
Albania
Albania thug-life types certainly are not doing the country’s reputation any favors, with negative press a long constant in the UK. Those headlines hit a fever-pitch this week with news of a potential mafia hit in Australia making major headlines. Investigative journalists, including The Age’s Nick McKenzie have pointed to the mystery death of a trucking director who supposedly fell from a stack of shipping containers this month in Adelaide. Yet McKenzie has uncovered potential foul play… just short of murder, with the journalist noting that it’s only clear that said trucking director, Troy Kellet, did not want to be “there that night” against the background of other reports that Kellet may have been pressured to aid in the transport of narcotics.
Kellet, 43, fell to his death probably around 12:20 a.m. July 9. According to media reports, police are investigating whether the death was in fact a hit or at least a death linked to the Albanian Mafia—and now it appears that Kellet had, remarkably, sold his trucking business for AUD 10 mln only hours (although some stated that the transaction took place 48 hours prior) before the fall.
Some reports have claimed that Kellet may have been trying to “recover narcotics” for the mafia before he fell.
The Albanian Mafia began to make headlines for cocaine trafficking and the fact that it was elbowing its way into the crime scene in Australia in 2020.
There are some suggestions that Kellet was trying to hide at the scene. Police have arrested two suspects, one who has already been charged with the possession of an unregistered gun and the other for trying to pass off a false address to police.
The Australian headlines are relevant for the fact that have been much repeated in the UK, where some newspapers have made much of Albanian criminals easily beating immigration authorities to set up shop. Yet further headlines highlighted the scale of the problem this week, with various papers noting that “Britain will pay GBP 4 mln a year” to take back high level Albanian criminals. These include 17 convicted murderers—and among these one serial killer—who will soon be deported, as revealed by The Telegraph.
The serial killer in question, Mane Driza, a.k.a. “Scarface” has been sentenced to 336 years in prison for five murders. Others soon to be deported include narcotics traffickers and rapists.
Belarus
Belarussian journalist Pavel Mazheika, 45, was found guilty of extremism this week—as well as working for news caster Belsat TV, which Belarus seems as the same thing. He is now facing six years in prison.
It turns out that the Wagner Group in Belarus may not be headed by Evgeniy Prigozhin at all—or at least not operationally, as the All Eyes On Wagner project has now named a Ukrainian, Sergey Chubko, as heading the mercenary group. Meanwhile, tales diverge, as reportedly there is aggressive recruiting in Belarus to find those who may be willing to eventually invade Poland and Lithuania. Some 5,000 are reportedly in Belarus, with a total of 11 convoys having been sighted as having crossed the border, with some convoys featuring armored vehicles. At the same time, Wagner members in Russia don’t seem to want to go anywhere, and there are multiple reports of sad mercenaries hanging out at trains stations getting very, very drunk. Which is quite believable, really.
Belarus
With somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 Wagner mercenaries now likely based in Belarus, reactions have been varied with regard to how serious a threat is posed to Poland and to the Suwalki Gap, [...] which has been termed in the past as the most dangerous point in Europe where East meets West. Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence has downplayed the threat, with Ukraine noting that the Polish military would easily deal with an incursion, and that it would be “suicidal” for Wagners to attempt raids.
That said, the walking enigma who is Wagner leader Evgeniy Prigozhin, has talked a big game for Wagners in the future, and there still remains the lingering question as to why he was not jailed—or assassinated—by Russia, following the aborted drive on Moscow in June.
For now his mercenaries are based in Tsel, Belarus, although they have participated in drills and training closer to the Polish border.
In the meantime, Poland has certainly taken notice (and it was difficult to ignore threats from Russian MPs and also comments from Belarussian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, who stated that he was having difficulties holding the Wagners back—and that they wanted to target Rzeszow and Warsaw). Polish Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak implied in a “tweet” that new military forces would be created or sent to the area to be ready for Wagners or Russian forces both.
He also stated (again) that new units would be placed in Augustow in order to bolster the Suwalki Gap.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)
Bosnia’s decision to go back down the path of criminal libel in the media has not made the EU happy, with the Office of the High Representative having stated that this is an “attack on civil liberties characteristic of authoritarian regimes.” The move could also threaten planned EU accession—although radical Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik loves the idea. The new law would not only make libel a criminal offense, but it includes fines of EUR 60,000 in such cases. Which would be tough for journos to pay just about anywhere in Europe.
That said, the reality is that defamation—which typically extends to libel in the media—is a crime in many countries across the EU.
In other words, big talk.
The former mayor of Ilidža Municipality Senaid M., along with a number of municipal architects and advisors, were indicated for abuse of authority this week by a Sarajevo court, with Senaid M., accused of taking a bribe to aid a residental-business real estate investor, Panamera, to… erm… sort out spatial planning issues. A similar situation was also noted with regard to a second investor, Malak Group. The other defendants were supposedly following the instructions of Senaid M.
Property seizures against Panamera were noted as coming to BAM 9.9 mln. Against Malak Group, this was reported to have totaled BAM 14 mln.
Bulgaria
Bulgaria has now flipped from generally opposing the supply of military aid to Ukraine to sending both vehicles and ammunition. Some 100 armored personnel carriers will be sent to Ukraine, plus 50 other vehicles and a second package of ammunition, as approved by Bulgarian Parliament July 21.
Czech(ia)
Criminal proceedings have gone forward with regard to a Czech police officer in Usti nad Labem appears to have misunderstood his job description and in fact was working as a drug dealer and distributing cocaine. He was accused of buying 128 grams of cocaine only to sell it or give it away for free. The officer was originally arrested in April, and police seized CZK 90,000 and EUR 7,800, as well as a mall amount of cocaine.
Kosovo
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has repeatedly called out Kosovo over what now appears to be turning in to an unnoticed Balkan arms race, with Vucic going so far in mid-July to announce a ban sales of Serb military hardware abroad for one month in order to focus on Serbian “security.”
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti meanwhile has appeared to confirm this, telling the Daily Vecernje List, as cited by N1info.rs, that Kosovo is arming itself due to Serbia’s “military bases.” He also criticized Vucic for not allowing ethnic Serbis in North Kosovo to properly integrate while criticizing Vucic for his attachment to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the former regime of Yugoslavia.
In truth, Vucic and Serbia have come under the crossfire of late, with secret service head Aleksandar Vulin sanctioned by the US for alleged links to organized crime, an illegal arms dealer and Russia. Meanwhile, Serbia has also this week appeared to develop inroads with Iran on trade, and Vucic’s warm relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has rankled both the EU and US alike. Still, Vucic has also repeatedly been wooed by both the EU and the US, and ostensibly it the country is still on a loose track to join the EU.
Yet there appeared still more evidence this week when it comes to the aforementioned arms race, as Serbia went all but ballistic over an announcement that Turkey would begin to supply Kosovo with Bayraktar TB2 drones—the same type that was used against Russia successfully early in the war in Ukraine.
Stay tuned, as US relations with Kosovo—which have of late been rocky—might just get a tad worse.
Former Kosovo Director of National Intelligence Drton Gashi received a four-year, eight-month prison sentence this week for illegally deporting six Turkish citizens from Kosovo in 2018. Six teachers, who had residence permits and green cards, were simply deported anyway by Gashi, following a request by Turkey to detain them over possible links to the Muslim Gullen group, which Turkey believes attempted to overthrow the Turkish government in 2016. All six teachers are now in prison in Turkey. The arrests and deportations violated a wide rang of rights defied by the Kosovo Constitution, as well as the European Convention of Human Rights.
Kosovo PM Albin Kurt’s government is making good on promises to reduce and refine the ethnic Albanian police presence in North Kosovo, 74 new officers have been hired, of which 45 are ethnic Serb and the rest are non-Albanian.
The new hires are intended to alleviate tensions in ethnic-Serb dominated enclaves, which protested violently following a series of issues that first included demands for Kosovo Serbs to re-register license plates and to get new Kosovo IDs.
This resulted not only in protests but in a walkout by ethnic-Serb police officers and other ethnic-Serb officials, including local mayors. This was made different by rushed elections that were roundly ignored by Serbs, but which resulted in ethnic-Albanian mayors in four districts, despite voter turnout of 3.5 percent.
Now, following prodding from the EU, Kurti has promised a reduced police presence and also new elections. The new police hires are seen to be a step pin the right direction, but it remains to be seen as to how they are accepted on the ground. Non-Serb officers include Bosniaks, Roma, ethnic-Turks and ethnic-Egyptians.
That said, the new hires have immediately been threatened, which has drawn a sharp response from EULEX mission chief Giovanni Pietro Barbano, who said in a Twitter release: “I am very concerned about media reports regarding threatening messages against newly deployed Kosovo Police Officers from non-majority communities.
“Any kind of intimidation is unacceptable, and I stress the importance of Kosovo Police to reflect and represent the entire Kosovo population,” he added.
Latvia
Latvia has plans to increase defense forces to 31,000, according to Maj. Gen. Imants Ziedins, as cited by LETA. This would be an increase of 1.3 times current personnel, the general stated. A sizeable portion of these troops are and will be made up of National Guard units, with National Guard numbers already slated to reach 12,000 by 2027.
Lithuania
With the Black Sea Grain Deal over—and with continued missile attacks on Odessa—Lithuania has called for an increase of grain exports from Ukraine to run through the Baltic states. At present, Ukraine is scrambling to find alternate routes, and geo-location checks have not revealed any ships willing to run the Russian red-line to get ships into or out of the Russian controlled section of the Black Sea.
Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis, together with other ministers, formally noted that rail lines need to be structured to move grain and that “green” transport avenues should be set up on the Polish-Ukrainian border in order to move grain to the Baltics—from where grain could be exported by sea.
This, however, ignores a current grain flap when it comes to Poland and several other countries in the EU, which allowed an effective ban on Ukrainian grain in order for those states to protect their own markets.
On July 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the ban, which may run until the end of 2023 and prevents imports to Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia if wheat, maize, sunflower seeds and rapeseed are found for those domestic markets.
Second plug of the week
To further complicate matters, it appears that, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP), that war profiteers have been making a killing off of grain, which was put down in part to Ukrainian corruption. The site, together with the Rise Project, conducted a deep investigation to reveal that “in the first seven months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, much of the grain passing through Halmeu and other border crossings was exported by dubious Ukrainian companies that are accused of tax evasion and other crimes.”
Some 300 companies are now under investigation by the Ukrainian authorities, and they may have defrauded the state of USD 140 mln. Moreover, “multiple high-ranking officials are accused of abusing their positions to help set up the tax evasion mechanism, including senior customs officers working at ports in the Odesa region.” Check out the full article here:
Moldova
And here is an investigative war news plug of the week:
A remarkable feat of investigative reporting appeared in the on-line magazine, The Insider(theins.ru) this week, which can be seen here: https://theins.ru/en/politics/263675
The article notes how the rooftop of the Russian embassy in Chisinau keeps sprouting satellite dishes and transmitting devices, and that it became “particularly noticeable ahead of presidential or parliamentary elections, as well as during the visits of foreign delegations to Moldova—as well as the “prior to the 1 Eurosummit and in May. following a cyber-attack on government networks, which resulted in thousands of classified documents being compromised.”
According to The Insider, individuals identified on said rooftop were “communication officers associated with the GRU and SVR, closely connected to hacker groups responsible for breaching the electronic mailboxes of Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and Hillary Clinton.”
Check this one out.
In fact, it is worth a deeper read, as since publication Moldova announced it would expel 45 Russian diplomats and embassy staff due to “unfriendly behaviour.”
This is hardly the first time that Moldova has accused Moscow of spying, and Russian diplomats have been routinely jettisoned from EU countries over the course of the last 12 months. A tally of booted Russian embassy staff was featured in the hard copy of The Corners (which can still be downloaded as a pdf) from this website.
Montenegro
Last week was not a banner seven days for Balkan police, and in Montenegro former National Police Chief Veselin V. was arrested for abuse of office and participation in a criminal gang on July 24.
The arrest came with the support of Europol, and Montenegro Special Prosecutor Vukas Radonjic noted that multiple apartments were searched in Podgorica, Zabljak, Mojkovac and Niksic.
Veselin V. has a long, somewhat controversial history, during which he faced allegations of corruption while also battling with the media. Possibly literally. Editors and journalists who were attacked and beaten were left… unsatisfied when it came to the solving of such crimes, and allegedly Veselin V.’s personal chauffer made direct threats to journalist Olivera Lakic—who in the early years of the past decade was focused on… yep, you guessed it, smuggling. By 2013 a police officer alleged that Veselin V. had put together a special team to… yep, you guessed that one too—beat up journalists. In 2011 he lost his job when wire-taps were published revealing conversations that included infamous drug trafficker Darko Saric, then Prime Minister Igor Luksic and Foreign Minister Milan Rocen. He was also embroiled in a real estate scandal involving the actual police headquarters in Podgorica. None of this slowed down Veselin V.’s career, however, as he reappeared as top police chief under Prime Minister Dusko Markovic—a job he held from 2018 to 2020.
Poland
One of the longest-running government email leaks on record continues to haunt the Polish Law-and-Justice (PiS) government. Since June 2022 an endless tumble of screenshots have flooded the internet—most of which supposedly have come from the private mail of PiS politician Michał Dworczyk. Much has been made of this in the press, and the government has more than once announced that secret service investigations are ongoing. That said, the leaks continue, with the latest, as cited by Polish news site Onet.pl indicating that right-leaning journalist and columnist Bronislaw W. consulted with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki or at least suggested how to deal with difficult Polish-Israeli relations. The mail—if legitimate—is troubling, as it notes a number of “enemies,” which allegedly include the Center for Research on the Holocaust of Jews at the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Jewish Historical Institute and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The Polish Central Bureau of Investigation (CBSP) revealed this week that officers, under the supervision of the Warsaw Praga District Prosecutor's Office, busted a gang linked to both hooligans and specializing in the trafficking of narcotics. The gang was headed by the somewhat notorious Marcin K., a.k.a. "Father", and 11 were arrested, including several infamous persons from the criminal underworld of the Praga district. The gang allegedly trafficked in narcotics and psychotropic substances, mainly amphetamine, cocaine, mephedrone, marijuana and MDMA tablets. Police believe that the gang trafficked some 100 kilograms of the above over the past year, worth approximately PLN 5 mln.
During raids police seized cocaine, marijuana, amphetamine, MDMA tablets, approximately 40,000 PLN in cash, mobile phones, laptops and brass knuckles. More arrests are likely forthcoming.
Under the guidance of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Rzeszow CBSP officers also hit a gang specializing in passing off technical oil as diesel on the market as part of a VAT scam against the state. The gang may have managed to “introduce” several dozen million liters of oil to the market in this fashion, costing the state PLN 500 mln. According to investigative findings, technical oil was purchased, the product was decolorized and then it was sold as full-fledged diesel oil without proper documentation and omitting tax liability.
The gang may have actually between 2007-2015 “laundered” PLN 1.5 bln in this fashion. Seven persons have been arrested. Approximately, PLN 200,000 and another PLN 500,000 in other currencies was seized, as well as three DAF truck tractors worth PLN 1.5 mln and three luxury cars with a total value of nearly PLN 2 mln. In addition, property belonging to the suspects in the form of real estate with a total value of nearly PLN 30 mln was documented. Now 26 people are considered suspects in the case.
Serbia
Serbia is still getting much-deserved criticism for attacks on the free press, with the Permanent Group for the Safety of Journalists (SRG) stating on July 26 that 42 journalists have been threatened in 2023 in Serbia. Four perpetrators have been sentenced. The SRG is made up of members from the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the OSCE, media organizations and the Head Office for Public Prosecution.
Serbian police cooperated with four other countries and Interpol to break an international organized crime gang that specialized in trafficking Cuban immigrants to the EU through Serbia and North Maceonia, according to Interpol and the Serbian media, including RTS.
Europol stated that the network likely trafficked 5,000 Cubans to the EU, netting a profit of EUR 45 mln. Raid in conjunction with Spanish police seized forged documents, 18 pieces of real estate, 33 vehicles and 144 bank accounts.
War in Ukraine updates are available mid-week through the Patreon account on this page.
With that in mind, fierce fighting has been seen in multiple areas of the front, ranging from Ukrainian success in Robotnye in Zaporizhzhia to Staromayorske to a Russian offensive that has seen success and remains a threat in Svatove and Kupyansk. These updates will be noted on Monday’s vlog, seen at The Corners with Preston Smith here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCornerspoland
Otherwise, HANG IN THERE AND HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
Photo is a FBI surveillance photograph of Albanian-American mobster, Alex Rudaj, boss of the Rudaj Organization, outside Jimbo's Bar in Astoria, Queens on April 15, 2003. This is a federal photo that is under public domain.