The Americas Post - This bridge is covered, but what about the other 1,600 kilometers?

Colombia and Peru have agreed upon a plan to combat criminal organizations on their common border, the defense ministers of the two countries announced to the press after a Wednesday meeting in Bogota.

“Colombia and Peru have decided to aggressively confront organized crime which respects no borders, such as drug trafficking and illegal logging and mining,” said Peruvian Defense Minister Alberto Otalora.  He spoke at a press conference accompanied by his Colombian host and counterpart, Juan Carlos Pinzón.

“Organized criminals on our borders are hereby notified that Colombia and Peru, as of this moment, will increase joint activities not only to combat organized crime, but to achieve concrete results in the shortest time possible,”  Otálora said.

In addition, Peru agreed to lead the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) on the issue of combating transnational crime.  For Peru, “crime has no boundaries” and therefore is seeking cooperation with “brother countries”, said Otalora.

The Peruvian Minister announced “a new era of defense relations between our countries”, while stressing the traditional “good relationship” between the two nations.

Pinzon said, for his part, that “the relationship of Colombia and Peru is not only friendly and formal, but means a permanent presence of Peruvian officers working with Colombian officials, and the presence of Colombian officers working with the Armed Forces of Peru” .

The ministers agreed to take joint action against criminal groups in the border area ”in the coming months”.

Security operations will be accompanied by social initiatives for the people on both sides of the 1,600 km long border,  the Colombian minister stressed.

To assess the situation, the two ministers agreed to meet again in March at the border, and hope that this meeting will also be attended by Minister of Defence of Brazil, Celso Amorim.

Industrial cooperation in defense matters was another issue discussed.

“Colombia has been experiencing major developments in its military industry, and is fully prepared to offer it to friendly countries, like our Peruvian brothers,” said Pinzon.  He mentioned that Lima has already made “small” purchases from Colombia, but gave no more details.

The Americas Post - Illegal lottery results are openly posted in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazilian police are investigating possible connections between the organized crime groups controlling illegal gambling in Rio de Janeiro and Russian and Israeli mafias, with casinos in Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay.

According to daily newspaper O Globo, the legal casinos play a key role in laundering money for operators of illegal lotteries and slot machines in Rio.  Other crimes under investigation by Brazilian Federal Police include tax evasion, smuggling and homicide.

According to the police, the Israeli Abergil and Russian Bratva organized crime syndicates were sought out by the Brazilian operators of the illicit Bicho lottery, for their expertise in money laundering.  Evidence of the connection came to light during investigations of cash remittances to foreign bank accounts, mainly in Uruguay and Panama, associated with various hotels operating casinos in South America.

Investigations over the last two years have produced 21,000 hours of recorded telephone calls between known criminals such as Israeli Yoram El Al, Meir Zloff, Tal Amir, Genrich Birman and Vitaly Okorov.

The Americas Post - Al-Saadi Gadhafi wanted to go Al Puerto Vallarta. Photo Credit: AP

Mexican authorities said Wednesday that a surviving son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and three other relatives planned to enter Mexico under false names and hide at a Pacific coast resort.

The plan to smuggle in al-Saadi Gadhafi allegedly involved two Mexicans, a Canadian and a Danish suspect, all of whom have been arrested according to Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire.

The plot was discovered by Mexican intelligence agents in September as al-Saadi fled Libya shortly after his father’s downfall.  He never made it as far as Mexico, ending up in the Western African country of Niger where he currently resides.

The plotters allegedly flew to Mexico, opened bank accounts and bought safe houses in several parts of the country, including one just outside Puerto Vallarta.

“The great economic resources which this criminal organization has, or had, allowed them to contract private flights,” Poire told a news conference.

Poire named Canadian Cynthia Vanier as the group’s ringleader.  He said she had been picked up on Nov. 10 and is now under house arrest with three other suspects on suspicion of document falsification, human smuggling and organized crime.

Poire said Vanier “was the direct contact with the Gadhafi family and the leader of the group, and presumably was the person in charge of the finances of the operation.”

The plot also allegedly depended on a Mexican woman living in the United States, who Poire said obtained the falsified Mexican identity documents.

A Danish man acted as “the logistic liaison” for the plan, Poire said.  He said the alleged conspirators also traveled to Kosovo “and several Middle Eastern countries.”

The Mexican officials made no mention of Moammar Gadhafi himself being involved in the plan, and Poire did not say which relatives may have planned to accompany the son to Mexico. The elder Gadhafi fell from power in late August and was killed in Libya on Oct. 20.

Poire said that false documents were issued in the names of “Daniel Bejar Hanan, Amira Sayed Nader, Moah Bejar Sayed and Sofia Bejar Sayed.”  The Gadhafi name does not appear anywhere in the documents.

The Americas Post - Dominican police respond to demonstrators throwing bottles and rocks. Photo: KINT News

Amnesty International released a highly critical report on Tuesday, saying the national police force kills and tortures with impunity in the Dominican Republic.

The Dominican national police were responsible for 15 percent of violent deaths recorded annually in the Dominican Republic from 2005 to 2010, according to the report.  The London-based human rights group said police abuse in the Caribbean nation has accompanied increased violent crime due to drug trafficking, the spread of firearms and worsening poverty rates.

With a population of 10 million, the Dominican Republic shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.  The National Police said 2,367 people had been killed by its officers from 2005 through 2010, according to the report.

The report blamed “hardline policing methods” for contributing to escalating violence and crime instead of reducing it, as a result of inadequate government oversight and reforms.

“At the heart of the failure to implement effective reforms and ensure that Dominicans have the effective policing that they need is a lack of political will,” the report said.  ”Those in power have failed to confront those with a vested interest in maintaining the current system in which corruption is deeply rooted and human rights abuses by the police are pervasive.”

In addition to what it described as widespread police torture of criminal suspects, Amnesty said there was evidence to suggest that some killings by the police were so-called “extrajudicial executions.”  There was no immediate response to the report from the Dominican government or police.

As recently as April 2011, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble congratulated the Santo Domingo police force for being “one of the best in the world”.

Yury Fedotov has a right to look concerned these days

Addressing the press after meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderón this week, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Director Yury Fedotov stressed the impact that organized crime has on that region as well as other parts of the world.

“These criminals are responsible for the death and misery of people across the globe through their increasingly diversified illicit operations,” said Mr. Fedotov “We have to remember however that such violent crimes form part of a much bigger, worldwide picture in which we face a complex and shifting threat; we have to remember that while the crimes are often violently local, our solutions must be global.”

His two day visit followed UNODC discussions with the Mexican Government as the two aim for a strategic alliance against organized crime in Central America. The meetings with President Calderón and other senior Mexican leaders covered topics from human trafficking and migrant smuggling to illicit drugs and corruption.

Reflecting on those most affected by organized crime, Mr. Fedotov expressed solidarity with the people of Mexico:  ”On too many occasions, it is the citizens who have become victims while attempting to pursue a peaceful existence.” Referring to last month’s massacre at a Monterrey casino, the Director pledged continued support to Mexico, whose location between South and North America makes it ground zero for transit of illicit drugs as well as people.

Before traveling on to South America, the Director praised Mexico’s fight against organized crime and warned the international community against viewing this as a localized problem.  Calling for greater cooperation on both regional and global levels, Mr. Fedotov said “tackling organized crime and the criminals behind these networks without international collaboration is futile. If this is done without considering the wider region, we simply run the risk of having criminal networks relocate to a new country.”

Interpol Summit in Montevideo against tech crime

During the inauguration in Montevideo, Uruguay of the XI International Conference of the Interpol Working Group on Technology Crime (including cybercrime) , the President of the Interpol Working Group Mr. Miguel Angel Justo (from Argentina) said that “the police of the countries of Latin America must bring their national legislation on tech crime to the conference, in order to increase cooperation to better cope with cybercrime”.
After inaugurating the 11th Meeting of the Working Group in Montevideo, the Principal of the Argentine Federal Police Mr. Justo also said that “the ongoing challenge is to achieve international cooperation against technology and Internet crime.”

“There is no technique that can advance in cybercrime without achieving  international cooperation, due to the dynamic nature of the Internet,” Police Chief Justo said, estimating  that “international cooperation is the only way to circumvent the difficulty of defining the jurisdictions in investigating a cyber crime of this type.”

The current state of cooperation “today may not be the ideal to which we aspire,” Mr. Justo admitted. “We think our countries should have a better legal and legislative framework to fight cybercrime, but to alleviate the shortcomings of law we are making efforts at the regional level within the framework of Interpol,” he added.

Justo explained that the nature of such crimes makes it difficult to apply traditional rules. For example, in most countries of the region Business Internet Service Providers BSIP are not required to store information for a specific period.

“When there is no obligation for them to store this information, we do not have the information necessary to conduct an investigation,” he said.

“This happens in most countries , and very few have legislated on the subject”, added Mr. Justo that “ at some point our countries are going to regulate this technology , so that we can do our police work, “he said.

From Wednesday until Friday in Montevideo, representatives of police research units of each country devoted to combating cybercrime will exchange information on new types of crime through the use of Internet and social networking and ways to combat them.

The participants and members of this Working Group include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Spain, France, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be misused for crime, violence and terrorism

In the beginning, social networks were just a new way of socializing among friends and business people. In the last few years, some people have begun using these networks for other purposes than family and friends.  Using facebook some people started a political movement that ended in the Egyptian revolution against Mubarak.

Others organize urban riots like some British youngsters recently did in London and Birmingham.

Others organize groups in Facebook to sell  illegal narcotics, as recently happened in Brazilian slums.

Facebook and social networking now often play a role in teen violence, school harassment, gang activity and organized crime.

That is why police are concerned about violence generated through online social networks, which then moves to the streets and result in dead and wounded people.

Some say there is a need to have a strategy for the treatment of such antisocial behavior.  That there is a need to form cyber patrols, composed of undercover policemen with support of sociologists and psychologists.

For example it is now quite usual that young people socializing in the web have been provoked and challenged to street confrontations, violence and crime.

A few days ago, in Uruguay a Facebook challenge also ended with a 19 year old killed in the vicinity of the Montevideo Shopping Mall.  These challenges to violence are also common in association with sports and football games.

On Wednesday, in Montevideo, the 11th World Meeting of Cyber ​​Cops opened with the participation of police specialists from 20 countries.

During the Police Conference , the cyber cops will exchange their experiences and views on the subject. Some proposals include the following: to research more about the “dark web”,  to cyber patrolling the net when there is evidence of criminal activity, to research the misuse of social networking like Facebook, to form a virtual patrol (with cyber cops, sociologists and psychologists) who do prevention work on these violent groups as done in sports.

But violence cannot be resolved by limiting the Internet or social networking technology. In that sense, during the inauguration of the conference, the Interior  Minister of Uruguay Mr. Eduardo Bonomi said that “the problem has clear social roots and cannot be only solved by police action. Police must intervene when something serious happens,  but this does not help to eliminate crime. We must fight the causes that lead to such violent or criminal activity. The solution must also come from a better education,  the role of the family, the role of the school and not by always looking after the police, “said  Bonomi.

Ecuador anti drugs officer (Photo credit Alberto Bailon Associated Press)

Since he arrived in handcuffs at the Judicial Police (PJ) of Pichincha in the north center of Quito, Myasnikov M. remained silent, just speaking with his translator.

The russian was wanted by Interpol accused of murder, illegal storage of firearms and explosives in his home country, Russia.

The official website of Interpol has two photographs of  the arrested mobster and the website informs that the man is 1.80 m. height.

An agent who participated in the police investigation said that in March 2010, the russian handled his ID in the Civil Registry of Quevedo, in Ecuador. The document says he is Ecuadorian, but called  Luis V. Ziga.

The police said that the ID document is a fraud.

However, the archives of the National Civil Registry said that the russian lived in Guayaquil, and in his ID his name was M. Myasnikov and that he was born on November 19, 1976. This last figure does not match the one on the page of Interpol, for there is said to be born on November 18 of that year.

Police said they have a driving license type B, which appears as Luis V. Ziga

The deputy head of the Judiciary Police of Pichincha, Lt. Col. Jose Ortiz, said the man lived in Ecuador since 2006. The ecuadorean Internal Revenue Service (IRS) says he is registered since 2008, with alleged zero income tax.

An agent who investigated the case said that shortly after arriving in Ecuador for eight months the russian was manager of a flower exports company . But then the owners of that company decided to fire him.

Then, the russian put a  factory of window structures in one of the valleys of Quito. In addition, he made trips to Peru, a country that allegedly he tried to expand his business.

The criminal investigation on this person began more than six months ago, leaded by the ecuadorean Intelligence, in coordination with  Interpol in Quito.

Lt. Col. Ortiz also said the man’s arrest took place at about 12:30 yesterday at a cafe in the valley of Quito.

Also, at first tried to put up resistance and even denied his identity, but by matching his fingerprints filed by Interpol , the authorities found that it was the wanted man.

Last week, the country authorities stopped in Quito the second chief of the FARC’s Front 48, alias Danilo. Before his arrest, the autorities arrested alleged members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and alleged members of Al Qaeda.

Last May, Jay Bergman, director of the DEA for South America, said that Ecuador is becoming a “United Nations” of organized crime.

This is because, according to the official, the “drug traffickers from Albania to China use it as a platform to reach agreements with cocaine smugglers.”

In the case of the foreign national arrested yesterday, the ecuadorean officers revealed that he allegedly has ties to the Russian mafia.

It was known under the name of Luis V. Ziga, the alien had at least one bank account with $ 1 000 000 and a luxury vehicle. Investigations continue to determine the origin of money and investment in the property. There are suspicions that the money would be devoted to money laundering.

After 17:00, the detainee was transferred to the pretrial detention center while awaiting deportation. The man was taken amid a strong police protection. Gendarmes of the elite units of police guarded the prisoner. Agents wearing bulletproof vest and helmet stayed all afternoon in the interiors of the Judicial Police. The stranger remained silent.

Director of European police cooperation group Europol Rob Wainwright

The Internet has become one of the main tools of European organized crime and human trafficking, drugs and money laundering in addition to being a vehicle of cybercrime.

According to a new report by the European Police Office, Europol, in the last two years have seen a marked increase of criminal groups who use the Internet to commit “traditional “crimes.

“This is a new picture of crime, increasingly marked by highly mobile groups and flexible operating in multiple jurisdictions and criminal sectors, and supported, in particular, by widespread and illegal use of internet, “says the report.

According to the institution, the network is being increasingly used to facilitate illegal immigration and trafficking in counterfeit goods provide with endangered species, among other crimes.

“The Internet has become the main facilitator of organized crime , ” said the director of Europol , Rob Wainwright .