Category Archives: Organized Crime

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Blog, Criminal, Immigration, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Deal with mafia not my son, Turkey’s Erdogan tells Italian judges

Erdogan told RAI television that the probe by prosecutors in the northern city of Bologna, where Bilal had been studying, might affect bilateral links. Erdogan, criticised in the West for the scale of a post-coup crackdown, told RAI: “Italy should be attending to the mafia, not my son. If my son came back to Italy at this moment, he could be arrested,”

Erdogan said in an interview with the state broadcaster. “This could even cause problems for our relationship with Italy.”Bilal, 35, went to Italy in 2015 to finish a doctorate. It was not clear when he left, but a legal source said he had been back in Turkey for some time. He denies wrongdoing.

In response, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Italy had an independent legal system and “judges answer to the Italian constitution and not the Turkish president.”The money-laundering investigation followed accusations by Murat Hakan Uzan, an exiled member of one of Turkey´s richest families and an opponent of the president, a legal source said.

Italian press reported prosecutors were looking into sums of money allegedly brought to Italy from Turkey. In July, a Bologna court allowed them to extend their investigation by six months.

Bilal’s lawyer Giovanni Trombini said his client declared that “all his economic and financial activity is totally transparent and legal, and the accusations are completely unfounded.”

Bilal, one of the Turkish president’s four children, has shipping and maritime assets and controls several oil tankers through his company and partnerships in other firms.

Sourced From – https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/139692-Erdogan-asks-Italy-to-check-its-mafia-not-his-son

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Cash-strapped Italian Mafia cuts spending on drug pushers and family support

On the streets of Rome crime doesn’t pay – or at least not like it once did.

One of the city’s most feared local mafia clans has been forced to cut spending after 37 of its alleged members were arrested by police in recent raids.

The Cordaro clan has cut daily payments to drug pushers and financial aid for jailed members and their families, according to prosecutors involved in the latest chapter of Rome’s ‘Mafia Capitale’ investigation.

The clan, known for its violent domination of Rome’s Tor Bella Monaca district, has been linked to several murders and major drug trafficking by police and prosecutors.

Disgruntled associates have been recorded by police complaining about cutbacks ordered by Natasha Cordaro, who took over the clan’s financial operations after her husband, Valentino Iuliano, was arrested on July 5.

Thirty-year-old Cordaro began by cutting clan payments to the families of jailed members from €150 a week to only €50 a week, according to the Italian daily, Il Messaggero.

“€150 plus 150 makes €300 a fortnight,” Michela Bucceri complained on a visit to her jailed mother, Elena, in a telephone tap recorded by police. “I am missing out on €200, they have taken it off me.”

Cordaro also cut daily payments from €80 to €70 per day to drug pushers who work for the clan in the crime-ridden neighborhood on the city’s outskirts.

“I have responsibilities,” Cordaro reportedly told pushers. “I am counting on €3,000 but you are only bringing me €900, what should I do? I have 15 families I’m carrying on my shoulders.”

She was recorded threatening one subordinate who complained.

“It is a crisis, it’s better you realise that. If not I will cut your throat,” she said.

Thirty-seven alleged members of the clan were arrested in dawn raids in the crime-ridden neighbourhood on July 5.

Read Full – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/25/cash-strapped-italian-mafia-cuts-spending-on-police-bribes/

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Argentina probes ties between ex-presidents, Miami real estate empire

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Offshore corporations have one main purpose – to create anonymity. Recently leaked documents reveal that some of these shell companies, cloaked in secrecy, provide cover for dictators, politicians and tax evaders. Sohail Al-Jamea and Ali Rizvi McClatchy

BY NICHOLAS NEHAMAS AND KYRA GURNEY

nnehamas@miamiherald.com

Where did a mystery man from Argentina get nearly $65 million to spend on ultra-luxury Miami condos, New York apartments and South Florida strip malls?

That’s what Argentine prosecutors want to know, especially because Sergio Todisco doesn’t seem to have a fortune of his own — and because he once acted as an offshore corporate front-man for a top aide to former president Néstor Kirchner.

The controversy again shows how Miami’s gleaming condos attract secret and potentially illicit money from around the world.

Between 2010 and 2015, Florida companies registered in the names of Todisco and his now ex-wife, Elizabeth Ortiz Municoy, a real estate agent in Miami and Buenos Aires, spent about $21 million on luxury condos at some of South Florida’s best-known towers, including Icon Brickell, St. Regis, Turnberry Ocean Colony, Apogee Beach and 900 Biscayne. The crown jewel was a $10.7 million, four-bedroom unit at the Regalia in Sunny Isles Beach. The companies later sold most of the units.

Other companies that listed Todisco and Municoy as officers invested $30 million in South Florida bank branches and a pharmacy, as well as a $13 million unit at Manhattan’s stately Plaza Hotel.

Only two of the transactions involved mortgages, according to public records, meaning the other deals were likely for cash.

In Argentina, major corruption investigations are swirling around ex-president Kirchner, who died in 2010, and his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who subsequently became president. Now, an Argentine federal prosecutor has opened an inquiry to determine if Todisco and Municoy were laundering money for Kirchner associates — or even the Kirchners themselves, although they’re not yet an official target of the investigation.

At the very least, there’s compelling evidence that Todisco and Municoy were buying properties for people who wanted to keep their identities hidden.

“The tax position of Todisco and Municoy revealed by documents obtained [by the prosecutor’s office] makes it impossible to associate them with the million-dollar transactions carried out abroad,” reads a complaint filed as part of the investigation into the Todisco affair.

Here’s why Argentine law enforcement is so suspicious: At the same time Todisco was snapping up luxe Miami condos, he acted as the director of Gold Black Limited, an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands. Gold Black’s stated purpose was “real estate investment” in the United States, according to documents in the massive leak of confidential offshore files known as the Panama Papers.

The company’s owners? Néstor Kirchner’s personal secretary and close friend, Héctor Daniel Muñoz, who died of cancer earlier this year, and Muñoz’s wife, Carolina Pochetti.

A lawyer for Fernández de Kirchner did not respond to questions and Pochetti could not be reached.

The president’s shadow

Muñoz had been a debt collector at the Kirchners’ law firm before they came to power.

During his time in government, he served as Kirchner’s “body man,” a sort of valet and jack-of-all-trades who answered the president’s phone, handled his medication and stayed by his side when he was hospitalized. Kirchner affectionately called him el gordo (“fatty”) and, according to a press account, once slapped him during an argument. The pair was also fond of play-wrestling. When Kirchner couldn’t sleep, he would wake up his friend to keep him company.

Blog, Business Law, Criminal, Legal News, Organized Crime, Supreme Court

Extortionist to appeal prison sentence in Las Vegas sex tapes case

By JEFF GERMAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Ernesto Ramos is appealing his 366-day prison sentence for using sex tapes to extort $200,000 from a wealthy businessman.

His lawyer, Kathleen Bliss, filed notice late Thursday that she would be asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to review the sentence handed down by Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro two weeks ago.

Ramos’ previous lawyer, Gabriel Grasso, disclosed at the sentencing that the unidentified married businessman had offered Ramos money to keep his identity secret for the rest of his life, just days before Ramos pleaded guilty in November.

But Grasso, who said he kept his distance from the settlement talks, told Navarro that his client believed the offer was made to pressure Ramos into taking a guilty plea. Grasso had sought probation for Ramos.

Bliss, a former longtime federal prosecutor, called the civil negotiations at the sentencing a “reverse extortion” and asked Navarro for more time to present evidence that there was“undue outside influence” over the plea agreement.

But the judge denied the request.

Federal prosecutors have gone to great lengths to protect the identity of the prominent businessman, including obtaining a protective order that keeps his name, initials and company’s name out of court documents.

An FBI complaint identifies the victim only as a married local resident who has two minor children and who is “part-owner of a well-known business” with access to a company jet.

Over a two-year period, the businessman tipped a stripper, who was Ramos’ girlfriend, about $200,000 to dance and have sex with him in a private room at an adult nightclub, the criminal complaint said.

The dancer, who has not been identified, secretly used her cellphone to videotape herself having sex with the businessman in a hotel room during an October 2014 tryst outside the country, according to the complaint.

Ramos acknowledged in his plea agreement that he later tried to extort $200,000 from the businessman with threats that included posting embarrassing sex photos from the tapes on social media.

Both Bliss and Grasso declined comment this week.

Bliss will have about three months to file a brief with the appeals court outlining her arguments for overturning her client’s prison sentence.

Ramos, who is free on his own recognizance, has until Sept. 28 to surrender to federal prison authorities.

Sourced From – http://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/extortionist-appeal-prison-sentence-las-vegas-sex-tapes-case

Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Helen Mirren: My mafia connection – Mafia Documentary On Page

The British actress explains why she decided to narrate the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice.

By Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren is an award-winning British actress.

I am passionate about Italy – in particular the people and places of South Italy – and I have a much-loved home there.

Italy has a dark history of mafia violence and political corruption. But it also has many incredibly brave and brilliant public servants – police, magistrates and politicians – who risk their lives and careers day in, day out to fight this enemy within. The threats they receive also put their family life under terrible strain.

These largely unsung heroes need to be recognised and supported.

At the heart of the documentary A Very Sicilian Justice is the astonishing and shocking story of one man – a public servant – who lives in fear and whose freedom is severely restricted simply because he is doing his job.

I also have a personal connection to the events described in the documentary. A close friend – the architect we employed to build our house in Italy, Brizio Montinaro – lost his brother in 1992 in the explosion of mafia violence described in the film.

Antonio Montinaro was a police bodyguard who died alongside the famous anti-mafia prosecutor, Judge Giovanni Falcone, in a bomb attack as he escorted the judge along the Palermo motorway. Falcone’s wife and two other bodyguards were also killed.

Today, almost 25 years later, Judge Antonino Di Matteo is investigating the criminal and political context behind these and other killings and, incredibly, finds himself under tremendous threat for doing so.

The murder plot and threats against Judge Di Matteo show that these events from the past are still very much alive today.

As Di Matteo says in the film, unless Italy faces up to and uncovers the truth behind this tragic period in its recent history, the events of this terrible “season of terror” will continue to poison and polarise Italy’s body politic for ever.

In Italy, the ongoing trials and investigations into this period are little reported. Internationally, this story is virtually unknown.

I hope that A Very Sicilian Justice, by bringing these important events to a worldwide audience, will give added support and recognition to Judge Di Matteo and his colleagues.

Many think Italian organised crime and corruption are confined somehow within Italy’s borders, but this is a dangerous misunderstanding of what “mafia” is.

The proceeds of crime are not only invested abroad and hidden in international tax havens. According to Italian investigators, mafias worldwide have changed their modus operandi. They are increasingly sophisticated, work together and operate more quietly than before through political corruption and by infiltrating the business and financial worlds.

Despite the recent referendum result in the UK and the potential knock-on effect of a severely divided Europe, I passionately believe countries, now more than ever, need to be vigilant, cooperate and unite if we are to win the battle against organised crime and political corruption.

Full article – http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/07/helen-mirren-mafia-connection-160706080712820.html