OCCRP Weekly News Round Up

Corruption among Russian police officers is officially completely over, announced Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliyev on Thursday.

“There, behind my back, in the past, remains bribery, abuse of authority, corruption and all that is negative – today there is none of that,” he told a meeting of local policemen in the western city of Kostroma.

The remarks came at the conclusion of a ministry-led “reassessment” of 875,000 of the country’s police officers.  Of all those who underwent the assessment, 183,000 were sacked.

Of course, this sweeping statement of good, transparent times to come needs to be taken with several tons of salt.  Even the Vice Minister of Internal Affairs, Sergei Gerasimov, admitted that the assessment process was fraught with some instances of corruption, although they were “minimal” in his words.

Reforming the police is a big step in Russia, which is ranked by Transparency International as the most corrupt large economy in the world.  There is a lot of evidence that most corruption and organized crime occurs with the blessing or involvement of some law enforcement officials, as a recent arrest of a police intelligence chief charged with the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya shows.

Yesterday, the Russian daily Komsomolets published an interview with Andrei, a government official found guilty of corruption and sentenced to nine years in jail, where corrupt prison officials plied him with champagne and whiskey daily, and let him roam the Moscow like a free man when he paid them well.

It seems that corruption may be behind Nurgaliyev’s back simply because he has chosen not to turn around and look it square in the face.

Twitter Terrorism

New-media junkies hail Twitter as an early warning mechanism and tool for direct democracy.  How about a platform for terrorism?

Two men have been detained in Mexico on charges that they drunkenly tweeted rumors of drug cartel-related shootouts at schools and banks.  Rumors that the Zeta cartel would be attacking citizens in Mexico’s largest port city of Veracruz had twitterati parents rushing to fetch their children from schools and jammed the roads with traffic.

The two alleged Twits who cried wolf are now being charged with terrorism because they “disturbed the public peace.”

The Gulf Cartel, La Familia Michoacan and the Zeta Cartel have been fighting for control of Veracruz.  In the past few months, a police chief and a prominent journalist writing about organized crime were both slain in the city.

Pretty in Pink: Chinese Artist Promotes Transparency in Portraits

Athletes, rock stars, and actors aspire to one day be included in their chosen profession’s “hall of fame.”  But here’s one hall of infamy no one wants to join: the Chinese Corruption Hall of Fame, a gallery featuring corrupt Chinese officials.

No Botticelli babes here.  And unlike the Mona Lisa, you can be sure that the subjects of these portraits don’t have much to smile about anymore.

Conceived by artist and filmmaker Zhang Bingjian, the art installation features portraits of 1,200 Chinese officials who have been convicted of corruption.  Not all those found guilty survive to see their likeness painted in pink, the color of China’s 100 yuan bill, the highest denomination of printed currency.  In a bid to show citizens the government is tough on corruption, authorities executed two former vice mayors last month after a court found them guilty of bribery.

Bulgaria’s Been Busy

Bulgaria has had a big week of action against organized crime.

Today, the Interior Ministry announced it was in the process of extraditing twelve Bulgarian nationals accused of credit card fraud to Italy as part of ‘Operation Shock.’

The country’s unit for Bulgaria’s Unit for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP) announced that yesterday it arrested Hristo (Itso) Baykov, considered an up-and-coming Sofia drug dealer.

Yesterday, Portugal announced that mobster Plamen Dishkov, who was sentenced for a 2002 murder but evaded authorities for ten years, was arrested in Portugal on a European police warrant.

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister Boyko Borisov announced that cigarette smuggling would be eradicated by 2012.  A difficult target, but a little bit more believable than Russian Minister Nurgaliyev’s promise on corruption.

Perhaps all Bulgaria needed was some criticism from former U.S. Ambassador James Pardew, who told a Bulgarian newspaper that the country  “looks like a big political theater to me.”  Pardew, who was ambassador from 2002-2005, said that politicians “are making lots of noise, sound tough, but in reality do nothing,” and that after a certian period of time they just “declare themselves to be winners and pass over to the other issue.”