The former Drug Czar in Mexico was arrested on suspicion that he accepted $450,000 a month from drug smugglers.

From CNN:

Mexican authorities have detained the country’s former drug czar on suspicion that he may have accepted $450,000 a month in bribes from drug traffickers, Mexico’s attorney general said Friday.

Noe Ramirez Mandujano was in charge from 2006 until this August of the attorney general’s office that specializes in combatting organized crime.

Ramirez is accused of meeting with members of a drug cartel while he was in office and agreeing to provide information on investigations in exchange for the bribes, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza said at a news conference Friday.

The arrest was part of an ongoing investigation called “Operation Limpieza,” or “Operation Cleanup,” the attorney general said. The operation targets officials who may have passed information to drug cartels.

The largest every crackdown on wildlife smugglers in Africa arrested 57 people.

From the BBC:

More than one tonne of ivory products has been seized in Africa’s largest-ever international crackdown on wildlife crime.

The operation, co-ordinated by Interpol and the Kenya Wildlife Service, led to the arrest of 57 illegal traders across five African nations.

The haul also included animal skins and hippopotamus teeth.

Interpol said that similar trans-national operations will be carried out worldwide to combat wildlife crime.

White extremists groups are upset over the election of Barack Obama as US President.

From the LA Times:

Barely three weeks since America elected its first black president, noose hangings, racist graffiti and death threats have struck dozens of towns across the country.

More than 200 such incidents — including cross burnings, assassination betting pools and effigies of President-elect Barack Obama — have been reported, according to law enforcement authorities and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups.

Racist websites have been boasting that their servers have been crashing because of an exponential increase in traffic.

And America’s most potent symbol of racial hatred, the Ku Klux Klan, is reasserting itself in a spate of recent violence, after decades of disorganization and obscurity.

The New York Times writes about the killing of an Israeli Mobster last week.

From the NY Times:

The Alperon hit had dominated the news for days. A narrow strip of a country, Israel has a limited pool of celebrities. So when Mr. Alperon, referred to by many as Israel’s Tony Soprano, was killed at 54, the local news media went to town.

Immediately after the killing, Mrs. Alperon welcomed the country’s top crime reporters into the family home and wept bitterly on camera, begging for pity on her seven children, “young orphans who would no longer be able to say ‘Father.’ ” One son, 21, had appeared in a Tel Aviv court that morning, where he was arraigned on charges of threats and extortion. The Israeli Don, who had attended the proceeding, was blown up shortly after leaving the courthouse.

Mr. Alperon was a mobster, according to the police, the leader of an organized crime family known for racketeering. The family is said to have fought for control of markets ranging from illegal gambling joints, to bottle recycling, to sidewalk flower stalls.

The United Kingdom is facing an increase in poaching as more and more people are killing animals and other forms of meats due to the rising costs of food.

From the Independent:

Police in rural areas across Britain are reporting a dramatic increase in poaching, as the rise in food prices and the reality of recession increases the temptation to deal in stolen venison, salmon, or rarer meat and fish.

Organised and sometimes armed gangs of poachers are accused of behaving dangerously, intimidating residents, causing damage to crops or to gates and fences. Squads have also been out in the countryside “lamping”, poachers using lights to transfix animals.

There have even been reports of drive-by poachers, aiming guns through the open windows of moving vehicles to pick off deer or other game. Others go about their work more discreetly, knowing that in some parts of the countryside, if they are careful, their activities can pass unnoticed for weeks.

Loan sharks in Italy are booming with business as people take out loans at high rates to deal with the economic downturn.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The worldwide economic downturn has opened the door for loan sharks to burrow ever deeper into Italy’s vulnerable economy by preying on businesses that need quick cash and credit, according to a new report by a respected trade group.

Confesercenti, a business association that has tracked Mafia income for the past 15 years, found that the credit crunch has a particularly sinister side in a country of 58 million people that struggles with four large Mafia gangs — the Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita — and other criminal enterprises.

In the past year, 180,000 firms in an economy dominated by small businesses apparently have succumbed to loan sharks, in part because they no longer can qualify for bank loans, according to a report released last week in Milan. “Shop owners are really falling into the trap,” said Marco Venturi, head of the association that produced “Crime’s Hold on Business.”

The rates charged by the loans sharks are ridiculously high.

Criminal groups account for about 6 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product. The loan-shark business generates an estimated $60 million a year for all criminal enterprises. Major Mafia gangs reap about $15 million from the high-risk credit deals—but they also are “actively” trying to expand that role by seeking more borrowers, Venturi added.

Venturi said researchers found that some strapped-for-cash business owners promise to pay out as much as 500 percent interest to secure a loan. The minimum interest demanded by organized crime is about 30 percent, he said.

New laws proposed by UK officials aims to strengthen the countries anti-corruption laws.

From the AP (via Google News):

Employers who turn a blind eye to corruption face up to 10 years in jail as part of a radical overhaul of Britain’s bribery laws proposed by the British Law Commission on Thursday.

The commission, the government’s law reform watchdog, also recommends the creation of a new offense of bribing foreign government workers.

The reforms, which are expected to be implemented in the next parliamentary session, go some way to meeting accusations that Britain has failed to properly tackle corporate bribery.

The current web of “several overlapping, but distinct, corruption offenses” will in effect be replaced with two general offenses of bribery — one concerned with giving bribes and one concerned with taking them.

The changes to the outdated laws, one of which dates back to Magna Carta in the 13th century, should also make it easier to pursue cases like the abandoned corruption inquiry into a deal between arms maker BAE Systems PLC and Saudi Arabia.

A Vietnamese diplomat was caught by a news crew smuggling rhino horns in South Africa.

From Bloomberg News:

ietnam recalled a diplomat from its embassy in South Africa after a television program allegedly showed her trafficking rhino horn, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The employee was filmed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation talking to an alleged trafficker in front of the Vietnamese embassy in Pretoria, according to a report in Thanh Nien newspaper today. The person was filmed taking rhino horn from the diplomat and putting it in the trunk of his car, Thanh Nien said.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ stance is to be strict in dealing with all acts of illegal trafficking and sales of wildlife and other negative actions in accordance with Vietnamese law and international regulations,” the ministry said in a statement yesterday.

The ministry has asked the diplomat to return to Vietnam for further explanation and investigation, the statement said.

A new law in the United Kingdom would give out stronger penalties to men who knowingly have sex with women were are trafficked.

From the Guardian:

New prostitution laws to be set out today will mean a plea of ignorance is no defence for men facing prosecution for buying sex from a woman who has been trafficked or is being exploited by a pimp.

Under proposals to be published today by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, a man who “knowingly” pays for sex with a woman who has been trafficked or is under the control of a pimp could face a charge of rape, which carries a potential life sentence.

The new offence of paying for sex with somebody who is “controlled for another person’s gain” is to carry a hefty fine and a criminal record.

The decision to criminalise men who pay for sex with trafficked women is likely to have a widespread impact. The Metropolitan police have estimated that 70% of the 88,000 women involved in prostitution in England and Wales are under the control of traffickers.

As pirates continue to hold hostages off the coast of Somalia, the process to pay out ransoms remains a tricky business for those paying.

From the Guardian:

The lesson from recent years in the Gulf of Aden is that piracy pays, and it is a lesson that has not been lost on the pirates.

Piracy is big business and almost certainly the biggest single business in Somalia’s lawless state. The typical ransom paid is between $1m (£500,000) and $2m, and the shipowners, lacking any other means of safeguarding their crews, ships and cargoes have consistently been willing to pay. Most estimates put the total ransoms paid so far this year at more than $30m.

The mechanics of those transactions are fraught with risk. How do you deliver large amounts of cash discreetly to a band of pirates on the high seas? Most maritime security experts involved in the trade are reluctant to talk, but there appears to be more than one method, and the name of the game is cautious improvisation.