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Dec 31,2006 - Jan7,2006 |
Flirting with Power
Part 14 - The Russian mob is spreading its wings in Canada and the U.S.
By Antonio Nicaso
Originally Published: 2001-06-24
This is an organization that thinks big, and it settled down here in North America." Ben Soave, head of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, displays little doubt when talking about criminal organizations connected to the former Soviet Union. "It is up-to-date also in regards to the needs imposed by market internationalization."
Reality overtook fantasy, went beyond Le Carrè, the Strugatsky brothers, Martin Cruz Smith.
"There’s a serious risk," wrote the German paper Bild am Sonntag quoting a report by the German security forces, "that criminal organizations possess very dangerous radioactive materials and that they could try some blackmail against the Western countries or the Arab world."
"In Russia," says Arnaud De Borchgrave of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, "there are 100 storage sites for nuclear weapons and materials, but only five of these are adequately protected."
Recent operations conducted by U.S. law enforcement agencies uncovered the existence of ongoing talks about the possible sale to some Colombian drug-dealers of a submarine, some helicopters and some surface-to-air missiles.
According to Bild am Sonntag, German intelligence and the U.S.’s FBI, all seriously worried about the situation, have opened offices in Moscow to collaborate directly with the Russian secret services in their fight against the mob.
But, as Fiammetta Cucurnia wrote some years ago on the Italian paper La Repubblica, even if a green light were given to foreign security forces to operate on Russian soil — which is pretty unlikely — it is difficult to imagine how we could cope with thousands of criminal organizations that have been acting unchecked and in total impunity enriching themselves in these years, becoming very powerful all over Russian territory. Even Boris Yeltsin had to admit that "Russia’s great disaster is organized crime that’s trying and occupying all key posts in economy, gaining ground in politics as well."
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