declarations of USSD Intelligence dossier UK-3-122a-2008.
I resolve and warrant that I will not divulge any part of this report….
Blah, blah….
She scanned to the end. The normal crap that no one paid much attention to. Probably everything in the documents had already been in the New York Times anyway.
She signed.
Cerny left the room. Alexandra stayed at the conference table and began to read.
TEN
A t first it was mostly issues of taxation, import fees and quotas and copyrights. Dull stuff, which she plowed through in the morning. Then she moved to the more incendiary stuff and started it during the afternoon.
A remorseless image of Ukraine came through: one of the most corrupt places on earth. Late in the day, one particular topic heading seized her, and the subsequent document seemed to sum up everything else she had read.
Partners in Extortion:
Criminals and Public Officials
The most pernicious element of organized crime in Ukraine is the alliance among former Communist Party elite, members of the law enforcement, security apparatuses, and gangs of professional criminals. Much crime in Ukraine combines government officials’ access to information or goods with the use or threat of force by organized criminals.
Crime and corruption had soared in Ukraine over the past decade. Since gaining independence during the Gorbachev era, the corruption of the Soviet years had been replaced by energetic gangs of organized criminals.
In the summer of 2004, several American corporations had considered investing a total of two billion dollars in Ukraine, mostly in the appliance field. After investigating carefully, each of the corporations decided that the business environment there was fraught with both financial and physical danger.
Drug traffickers, particularly those involved with heroin, laundered money through casinos, exchange bureaus, and state banks.
The banks provided criminal groups with information about businesses’ profitability and assets, which the gangsters used to extort money from them.
Criminals and public officials often colluded. The extortion was imaginative. Criminals, for example, extorted money from businesses by threatening to sell the information they illegally obtained from banks to the tax police. In turn, tax officials sold their information about businesses with crime groups in return for a share of the money the crime groups extorted from the same businesses.
Alex continued reading.
Infiltration by criminals into Ukrainian legislatures remains rampant. More than thirty members of the Parliament might be tried on criminal charges if they were to be stripped of their governmental immunity. Fifty-four legislators, at minimum, elected to local political bodies, also have criminal backgrounds. The problem of corruption extends to the highest levels of government in Ukraine. Ukraine’s prime minister in 1996-97, reportedly made tens of millions of dollars annually through his company’s license to import natural gas and oil.
[Case officer’s note: The former prime minister is also suspected of having stolen $2 million in state funds and stashed some $4 million in a Swiss bank during his premiership. In February 1999 Ukraine’s Supreme Council stripped the former premier of his parliamentary immunity, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He is currently incarcerated in the United States. See also, UK-2-356-2006.]
Alex moved along. There was a section on the growing narcotics problem in the newly independent state.
Ukraine has become a significant conduit for Afghani and Southwest Asian heroin bound for European and American markets….
A dismal feeling started to creep over her. Ukraine made Lagos look like Disneyworld. Why was she spending her life with such things?
She flipped to the final pages, absorbing quickly.
The main trafficking routes are (1) the seaports of Odessa and Sevastopol; (2) Transdniestria is often mentioned as a high-risk region for drug trafficking. The
I resolve and warrant that I will not divulge any part of this report….
Blah, blah….
She scanned to the end. The normal crap that no one paid much attention to. Probably everything in the documents had already been in the New York Times anyway.
She signed.
Cerny left the room. Alexandra stayed at the conference table and began to read.
TEN
A t first it was mostly issues of taxation, import fees and quotas and copyrights. Dull stuff, which she plowed through in the morning. Then she moved to the more incendiary stuff and started it during the afternoon.
A remorseless image of Ukraine came through: one of the most corrupt places on earth. Late in the day, one particular topic heading seized her, and the subsequent document seemed to sum up everything else she had read.
Partners in Extortion:
Criminals and Public Officials
The most pernicious element of organized crime in Ukraine is the alliance among former Communist Party elite, members of the law enforcement, security apparatuses, and gangs of professional criminals. Much crime in Ukraine combines government officials’ access to information or goods with the use or threat of force by organized criminals.
Crime and corruption had soared in Ukraine over the past decade. Since gaining independence during the Gorbachev era, the corruption of the Soviet years had been replaced by energetic gangs of organized criminals.
In the summer of 2004, several American corporations had considered investing a total of two billion dollars in Ukraine, mostly in the appliance field. After investigating carefully, each of the corporations decided that the business environment there was fraught with both financial and physical danger.
Drug traffickers, particularly those involved with heroin, laundered money through casinos, exchange bureaus, and state banks.
The banks provided criminal groups with information about businesses’ profitability and assets, which the gangsters used to extort money from them.
Criminals and public officials often colluded. The extortion was imaginative. Criminals, for example, extorted money from businesses by threatening to sell the information they illegally obtained from banks to the tax police. In turn, tax officials sold their information about businesses with crime groups in return for a share of the money the crime groups extorted from the same businesses.
Alex continued reading.
Infiltration by criminals into Ukrainian legislatures remains rampant. More than thirty members of the Parliament might be tried on criminal charges if they were to be stripped of their governmental immunity. Fifty-four legislators, at minimum, elected to local political bodies, also have criminal backgrounds. The problem of corruption extends to the highest levels of government in Ukraine. Ukraine’s prime minister in 1996-97, reportedly made tens of millions of dollars annually through his company’s license to import natural gas and oil.
[Case officer’s note: The former prime minister is also suspected of having stolen $2 million in state funds and stashed some $4 million in a Swiss bank during his premiership. In February 1999 Ukraine’s Supreme Council stripped the former premier of his parliamentary immunity, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He is currently incarcerated in the United States. See also, UK-2-356-2006.]
Alex moved along. There was a section on the growing narcotics problem in the newly independent state.
Ukraine has become a significant conduit for Afghani and Southwest Asian heroin bound for European and American markets….
A dismal feeling started to creep over her. Ukraine made Lagos look like Disneyworld. Why was she spending her life with such things?
She flipped to the final pages, absorbing quickly.
The main trafficking routes are (1) the seaports of Odessa and Sevastopol; (2) Transdniestria is often mentioned as a high-risk region for drug trafficking. The
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