Gangs steal ‘liquid gold’ amid shortages and surging prices after extreme weather damages harvests
Olive oil has become the most stolen product in supermarkets across Spain, with organised criminal gangs targeting the “liquid gold” to resell on the hidden market, according to new figures.
Olive oil is now the most shoplifted product in regions that account for 70% of the country’s population, the Financial Times reports.
Continue reading...Europe has been ‘negligent,’ as an acceptance of cocaine and cannabis leads to corruption, violence, and misery, says Aboutaleb
The mayor of a city on the frontline of the illegal drug trade has said that a “negligent” attitude to recreational drug use, including an acceptance of cocaine as the middle-class narcotic of choice, has led to violence and corruption in Europe’s poorest neighbourhoods.
As the Netherlands digests three life sentences handed out in the criminal trial of drug baron Ridouan Taghi and his “well-oiled murder machine” gang, Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam, has demanded authorities take a tougher line on cocaine use.
Continue reading...Maurizio Patriciello has had police protection since a bombing near his church in Caivano, Naples, but he vows to keep fighting crime
Father Maurizio Patriciello is running late. “I’m waiting for my bodyguards,” he says by text message.
He is neither a celebrity nor a politician but a parish priest in Caivano, a desolate, crime-ridden town on the outskirts of Naples. He has been living under police protection ever since a bomb, accompanied by the message “get out of our way”, exploded by the gate of his church.
Continue reading...Video of fight shows villagers with sickles and rifles chasing down suspected gang members amid gunfire
A clash between gunmen from a criminal gang and residents of a small farming community in central Mexico left 14 people dead and seven injured, local authorities said on Saturday.
Dramatic video of the fight on Friday posted on social media showed villagers in cowboy hats with sickles and hunting rifles chasing down suspected gang members amid bursts of automatic gunfire.
Continue reading...Inspection in England and Wales criticises pace of change since child abuse scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale came to light
Police are still blaming child victims of sexual grooming gangs for the attacks they suffer, an official report has found.
The inquiry by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) comes more than a decade after scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale came to light, revealing failings by the authorities that left gangs of men free to attack vulnerable young girls.
Continue reading...Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets
Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.
Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
Continue reading...Singer, whose music has been linked to crime gangs, and his wife are among 27 held in police raids targeting the Di Lauro clan
Before announcing his retirement from singing in 2020, Antonio “Tony” Colombo was arguably the most acclaimed singer of neomelodico, an Italian pop genre that resonates strongly within mafia strongholds in the southern regions of Italy.
His songs were so highly praised among the underworld that when he married Tina Rispoli, the widow of the slain Neapolitan mafia boss Gaetano Marino, in 2019, dozens of members of the Camorra attended their wedding.
Continue reading...Malaysian foreign ministry says 43 of its citizens were freed in Lima after being forced to take part in ‘Macau scam’
More than 40 people from Malaysia have been rescued by police in Peru after they fell victim to a human trafficking syndicate operating a telecommunication fraud.
The Malaysians were forced to participate in the so-called “Macau scam”, making calls to companies in Malaysia and Taiwan to demand money while posing as banks, police or justice officials.
Continue reading...September brings 11 deaths as country rocked by wave of violence, much of it suspected to be linked to split within criminal gang
September has become the worst month for shooting deaths in Sweden since records began in 2016, after two people died in separate shootings on Wednesday night, bringing the monthly total to 11.
Another person died on Thursday morning after a bomb blast.
Continue reading...Fifty-seven law enforcement officers held in six prisons amid sharp rise in gang violence ahead of election
Fifty guards and seven police officers have been released, Ecuadorian authorities said, after being held hostage in several prisons for more than a day.
The country’s corrections system, the National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty, said in a statement that the 57 law enforcement officers, who were held in six different prisons, were safe, but did not offer details about how they were released.
Continue reading...Alexandre Saraiva gives alert on organised crime in region ahead of anniversary of killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
The rapid advance of organised crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon risks turning the region into a vast, conflict-stricken hinterland plagued by heavily armed “criminal insurgents”, a former senior federal police chief has warned.
Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021, said he feared the growing footprint of drug-trafficking mafias in the region could spawn a situation similar to the decades-long drug conflict in Rio de Janeiro, where the police’s battle with drug gangs and paramilitaries has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Continue reading...Claudia Iacono, who was married to son of the late boss Moreno Gallo, was shot dead in her car outside the spa she owned
The brazen daylight shooting death of a Montreal mob boss’s daughter-in-law suggests “no one is untouchable”, said an organized crime expert, as the city braces for potential retaliation.
A woman’s body with several gunshot wounds was found in car on Tuesday. Local reports named the victim as Claudia Iacono, 39.
Continue reading...Matteo Messina Denaro’s hand-typed instructions found hidden in sofa at home of his sister Rosalia, say police
The sister of Italy’s recently jailed top mobster, described as “the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia”, has been arrested after police searching her house found pizzini – slips of paper that the boss used to deliver his hand-typed instructions.
According to investigators, Rosalia Messina Denaro, the sister of Matteo Messina Denaro – who was Italy’s most wanted man until his arrest on 16 Janurary – had helped her brother evade capture for 30 years and acted on his behalf as the “cashier” of the “family”, while also running the transmission network of the pizzini, thus enabling the mafia boss to maintain relations with his organisation during his long period as a fugitive.
Continue reading...Richard Wakeling, 55, had been on the run since he fled the UK before his trial for drug smuggling in 2018
A British organised crime boss has been arrested in Thailand after being on the run for five years.
Richard Wakeling, 55, from Brentwood, Essex, tried to import £8m of liquid amphetamine into the UK in April 2016.
Continue reading...Mark Pomerantz, who was on New York team investigating tax affairs, reportedly compares ex-president to John Gotti
New York prosecutors building a case against Donald Trump for allegedly lying about his wealth for tax purposes had to show the former president was “not legally insane”, one of those prosecutors reportedly writes in an eagerly awaited new book.
The lawyer, Mark Pomerantz, also reportedly compares Trump, the only confirmed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, to famous figures in the world of organised crime including John Gotti, the “Teflon Don” who died in prison in 2002.
Continue reading...Giuseppe Graviano files for defamation against Gomorrah author over origin of nickname
A Sicilian mobster has asked a judge to order the seizure of all copies of a book by the author Roberto Saviano, who is living under police protection after he faced death threats for exposing mafia secrets.
Giuseppe Graviano, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison, filed a lawsuit for defamation last week against the author of books including Gomorrah, and Solo è il Coraggio (Lonely is the Courage), about the life of the judge Giovanni Falcone, who was killed by the mafia in 1992.
Continue reading...‘Last godfather’ of Sicilian mafia Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested after 30 years on run
Italian military police have found a possible secret bunker suspected of being used by Matteo Messina Denaro, the “last godfather” of the Sicilian mafia who was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run.
The entrance to the bunker was concealed in a closet full of clothes in a house in Campobello di Mazara, a small town in Sicily where the apartment Denaro, 60, had been living in was discovered on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Italian investigators discover designer clothes and expensive shoes inside ‘normal’ two-storey building
The mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals who had spent 30 years on the run, lived in a modest apartment in western Sicily in his final months as a free man, Italian investigators said.
Denaro, 60, who was apprehended as he came out of a well-known private clinic in Palermo, lived in a small apartment inside a two-storey yellow building in the centre of the town of Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, in the heart of his territory.
Continue reading...‘Last godfather’ was apprehended as he came out of the private health facility on outskirts of Palermo
An Italian mob boss regarded as the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia was arrested after investigators received a tipoff that one of the world’s most wanted criminals had been receiving medical treatment for a tumour at a well-known clinic in Palermo, police sources have said.
Matteo Messina Denaro, 60, who has been in hiding since 1993, was apprehended as he came out of the private La Maddalena health facility on the outskirts of the Sicilian city, where special forces had been on guard since authorities first learned of his whereabouts three days ago. He was wearing luxury clothes and a €38,000 (£33,700) watch.
Continue reading...NSW police say several transnational organised criminal networks were collaborating on drug imports
Six Sydney men have been charged and millions of dollars in cash and drugs seized after a multi-agency police investigation into an international drug ring.
Another man was arrested in Los Angeles as part of a joint operation with US homeland security.
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