Category Archives: Organised crime

Rare stolen books, including works by Newton and Galileo, returned to owners

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Books worth more than £2.5m found in Romania after Mission Impossible-style theft

Hundreds of internationally important and irreplaceable books worth more than £2.5m that were stolen in a daring heist by abseiling burglars have been returned to their rightful owners.

Metropolitan police announced the successful conclusion on Tuesday of a near four-year police operation investigating the Mission Impossible-style theft of books that included rare works by Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo and the 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.

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Almost 60 bodies found in pits at property in Mexican town

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Search teams believe locals must have known about site in Salvatierra, Guanajuato state

Search teams are excavating a site in the central Mexico state of Guanajuato where 59 bodies have been found in clandestine graves in the past week.

The striking aspect of the discovery is that the site is not a desolate area far out in the countryside, but the town of Salvatierra.

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Liverpool gangs ‘dominate’ gun and drugs trade outside London

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National Crime Agency uses encrypted chat to uncover gun factories in north-west

Organised criminal gangs from Liverpool have risen to the summit of the UK underworld and “dominate” the firearms and drugs-trade outside London, the latest intelligence from senior officers at the National Crime Agency (NCA) reveals.

Analysis of encrypted messages from a communications system used by criminals has shown that the city has become the preeminent location for top-tier gangs sourcing high-volume importations of drugs and automatic weapons.

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Dutch arrests after discovery of ‘torture chamber’ in sea containers

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Police raids offer chilling insight into increasingly violent criminal underworld

Dutch police have arrested six men after discovering sea containers that had been converted into a makeshift prison and sound-proofed “torture chamber” complete with a dentist’s chair, tools including pliers and scalpels and handcuffs, a high-ranking officer announced.

Authorities said police conducted the raid before the converted containers could be used and alerted potential victims, who went into hiding.

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The Krays named their boa constrictor Read – after the man who would nail them

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Sunny and modest, detective Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read was admired by criminals and colleagues alike

Most people would be hard pressed today to name a single Scotland Yard detective, yet many would nod knowingly at the name of Leonard “Nipper” Read. While he will forever be remembered as the man who finally nailed the Kray twins, a major factor in his enduring reputation was that he was regarded with great affection, not only by his colleagues but by many in the criminal fraternity, who regarded him as a straight arrow in an era when some of his fellow detectives were far from that ideal.

Long after his retirement, Read was happy to reminisce about his work, and did not seem to mind being asked the same endless questions about the Krays.

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Secret bunkers and mountain hideouts: hunting Italy’s mafia bosses

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The Cacciatori unit searches the rugged landscape of Calabria for fugitives who have dug themselves deep into the earth

On the slopes of the Aspromonte mountains, Pasquale Marando, a man known as the Pablo Escobar of the Calabrian mafia, the feared ’Ndrangheta, built a secret bunker whose entrance was the mouth of a pizza oven.

Less than 10 miles away, Ernesto Fazzalari, who allegedly enjoyed trap shooting with the heads of his decapitated victims, lived in a 10 square-metre hideout in the formidable southern Italian range. When authorities came for him in 2004, Fazzalari, then the second most-wanted mafia boss after Matteo Messina Denaro of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, had already escaped through a secret tunnel under the kitchen sink.

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‘We live in a narco-state’: murder of Dutch lawyer prompts fear and fury

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Lawyers in gangland cases given emergency protection after unprecedented killing

Lawyers and prosecutors in major gangland drugs cases in the Netherlands have been given emergency protection after the unprecedented murder of a top defence lawyer prompted police and the media to claim that government naivety was turning the country into a narco-state.

Derk Wiersum was gunned down in the street as he left his home in the Amsterdam suburb of Buitenveldert on Wednesday morning. Police are searching for a 16- to 20-year old man in a black hooded top who fled the scene on foot.

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Venezuela’s Guaidó pictured with members of Colombian gang

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Opposition leader plays down images but analysts say they could prove highly damaging

Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan politician fighting to topple Nicolás Maduro, is facing awkward questions about his relationship with organised crime after the publication of compromising photographs showing him with two Colombian paramilitaries.

In an interview on Friday, Guaidó played down the significance of the pictures, in which he posed alongside two members of the Colombian criminal gang the Rastrojos identified as El Brother and El Menor.

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Tanzanian investigative journalist in court over money laundering

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Erick Kabendera also faces charges of leading organised crime and failure to pay tax

A Tanzanian investigative journalist has appeared in court charged with organised crime and money laundering.

Erick Kabendera, who was arrested by plainclothes policemen last week, appeared in court charged with leading organised crime, failure to pay tax amounting to 173m Tanzanian shillings ($75,000) and money laundering of the same amount. Press freedom advocates have called the charges “clearly retaliatory”.

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Spend £2.7bn more to tackle organised crime, says NCA chief

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Lynne Owens to make challenge to ministers during launch of strategic assessment

The government needs to find an extra £2.7bn to tackle the growth in serious and organised crime that is causing “staggering” damage to the United Kingdom, according to the director general of the National Crime Agency.

Lynne Owens is due to make the direct challenge to ministers on Tuesday as she launches the agency’s annual national strategic assessment mapping out dangers from cyber crime, child sexual exploitation, drugs and other serious and organised crime.

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‘Golden visa’ schemes pose risk to EU security, Brussels to say

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European commission is expected to sound alarm on their use to attract wealthy

Brussels is to warn EU member states that the “golden visa” schemes used by Britain and others to attract the wealthy have exposed the continent to corruption and organised crime.

A report from the the European commission, expected to be published on Wednesday, claims the schemes designed to encourage the super-rich to invest in return for residency rights or citizenship pose a danger to the continent’s security.

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