OCCRP Weekly News Round Up

The Albanian Interior Ministry wants to shut down a Tirana-based non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on combating terrorism and organized crime, citing “unconstitutional conduct and illegal activities.”

The ministry filed a civil suit against the Albanian Study Center Against Terrorism and Organized Crime because the group allegedly pursued investigations without going through necessary bureaucratic steps.

“This organization has practically operated as a private investigative police by applying methods characteristic of the state. With such actions, the fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens have been violated. Many actions of this organization can be conducted only with the approval of the court, or other state structures,” Deputy Interior Minister Avenir Peka said in an interview with SETimes.

The state police say that the organization was using official police emblems and imitating logos, identification badges, and a title that sounds like a state institution, all of which are considered criminal offenses.

The police have also accused the organization of embezzling funds.

Letter from a Kiev Jail

Former Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko wrote a missive in the Wall Street Journal from her cell in a Ukraine detention center, begging readers not to accept current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich’s “false promises.”  Tymoshenko, on trial for charges of abuse of power, was writing in response to an op-ed last week penned by the current prime minister, who assured readers that “Ukraine’s future lies with Europe.”  Tymoshenko, who was denied bail this week, agreed with the title but said, in essence, that Ukraine is getting further from Europe with Yanukovich at the helm.  She and co-author Hrihoriy Nemyria highlighted increased pressure on the media (the Reporters Without Borders media freedom ranking fell 42 places in one year, precipitous drops in foreign direct investment (73% the first months of 2011), and governance with “mechanisms associated with Soviet-style autocracy.”  She and ten members of her administration are in prison awaiting trial on what she refers to as “the flimsiest of charges.”

The Dalai Lama and a host of other prominent statesmen and thinkers have chimed in, calling on the courts to at least allow Tymoshenko and her colleagues to post bail.  In an open letter, they write, “fundamental tenets of a democratic society, such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press are increasingly coming under pressure.”

The letter, signed by the  Dalai Lama, Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, Czech President Vaclav Havel, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, former German President Richard von Weizsacker, Chairman of the Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko Grigory Yavlinsky, and others also said corruption is destabilizing Ukraine’s economy.

“Corruption cripples the country´s institutions and the government´s inaction on this problem is also having an economic impact.”

Russia: Courtroom Identity Crisis

Tymoshenko was expelled from a courtoom in early July for taunting a judge and playing on her iPad.  Insolent though she may have been, she never renounced her identity.

Mikhail Glushchenko, a Russian former Parliament Deputy on trial for racketeering, made national headlines Thursday when he was bounced from a St. Petersburg courtroom because of his refusal to answer to any other name than ‘Miguel Gonzalez.’

Glushchenko stands accused of leading a protection racket in the 1990s that extorted $10 million from prominent St. Petersburg businessman Sergei Shevchenko and his brother Slava, reports the daily Kommersant.

Glushchenko moved to Spain for five years and was arrested when he returned to his homeland to update his passport.

An investigation into allegations that he murdered the Shevchenko brothers and a third business partner in Cyprus in 2004 is underway.

Gluschenko’s lawyer has used claims of ill health to continually postpone the trial, but Moscow doctors have determined that despite his Spanish nickname, the defendant is fit to stand trial.

Corruption Suicides

Last week, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev proudly announced that corruption among Russian police officers is officially over.  But a village police chief from the southern region of Krasnodar was found dead Tuesday in his car.  Alongside him was a suicide note bemoaning ubiquitous corruption among almost all officials except the district police chief.

Investigators determined that the death was a suicide, but said they were determined to look into what or who may have driven the 32-year-old police officer, Alexander Peshekhonov, to kill himself.

Law enforcement has been targeting Krasnodar since November, when 12 people in the village of Kushchyovskaya were found brutally murdered.

While Mr. Peshekhonov’s death sounds potentially dubious, Chinese officials reported another suicide this week—they announced that Xie Yexin, an anti-corruption official working in Gong’an County in central China, took his own life—by stabbing himself eleven times in his office.

According to a government-issued press release, “All his wounds meet the characteristics of suicide.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that investigators ruled the death a suicide after a “meticulous investigation.”  Wang Jianping, a vice director of the Gong’an Security Bureau, told the Global Times that “It is not a criminal case and we have no obligation to investigate.”

But Xie’s family members are rightfully suspicious, saying their patriarch was in good spirits on the day he died.  Officials refuse to release Xie’s mobile phone because it contains confidential information.  Bloggers and human rights activists are linking his death to a corruption investigation he began on the region’s deputy communist party official Liu Baojun, something Jianping denies.