Kosovo bank head arrested

The searches were part of a “corruption and financial investigation into suspicion of abusing official position or authority, accepting bribes, tax evasion, trading in influence and money laundering,” according to the statement.

By Beth Kampschror

Local police raided bank governor Hashim Rexhepi’s office, house, another private company and the houses of three other suspects. Rexhepi will stay in prison for 30 days.

The raids and arrest follow the International Court of Justice ruling that Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008 was legal. But Kosovo’s still-disputed legal status is the least of its problems. CNN pointed out:

Pieter Feith, the European Union's special representative in Kosovo, has said corruption is a significant problem there.

"The major obstacles to desperately needed foreign investment are the interlinked issues of weak governance, widespread corruption and the breaches in rule-of-law," Feith said during prepared remarks before a European Parliament committee in June.

Panther returns to Montenegro

A Balkan jewel thief who participated in the 2003 London robbery that prompted police to dub  the gang of thieves “The Pink Panthers” is back in Montenegro after serving four years of his five-and-a-half-year sentence.

Milan Jovetic, described as a handsome 30-year-old with gelled hair, was waylaid by the AP in the mountain town of Cetinje:

Pushing his baby daughter in a stroller down a dusty street, he is asked if he is indeed Jovetic the Panther he grins and replies: “Do I look that way to you?”

But when asked about the crime ring, he snarls “You don’t have the kind of money for me to talk,” and walks away.

Jovetic was convicted in the UK of helping steal $30 million worth of merchandise from an exclusive Graff jewelers’ location in London. After Scotland Yard found a million-dollar blue diamond from the robbery hidden in a jar of face cream –  a hiding place used in the 1963 Pink Panther film – police started referring to the thieves, who have committed robberies throughout the world, as the Pink Panthers. This story, however, seemed to be built only on the AP’s encounter with Jovetic and his stroller. It didn’t mention anything new – not even the descriptions of Jovetic’s gelled hair, or the descriptions of the expensive BMWs parked outside gangster cafes. Gelled hair and fancy cars have been the classy trappings of young Balkan thugs for more than a decade.

In the wider region, Zemun Clan gangster Sretko Kalinic, who has been in a Croatian prison hospital since early June, says he doesn’t want to be extradited to Serbia because he has no faith in the Serbian justice system. Kalinic and fellow Zemun member Milos Simovic had both escaped to Croatia after the 2003 assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Though both were tried in absentia and sentenced to scores of years in prison, they stayed under the radar in Croatia for seven years, until they had a gunfight in Zagreb that left Kalinic hospitalized. Simovic was arrested trying to cross the border into Serbia. Justice officials told B92 that Kalinic will be extradited to Serbia in the next month. He’ll be the first to be extradited under a new treaty the two countries signed after the Kalinic-Simovic gunfight.

Kalinic’s derision aside, the Serbian justice system showed last week that it could manage to put a gang of drug dealers away for a considerable amount of time. A court last week gave an eight-member drugs gang a total of 38 years for smuggling heroin and cocaine into Western Europe inside car batteries.

EU criticism shifts to Romania

The European Union’s spotlight last week turned away from Bulgaria – which the EU punished by freezing hundreds of millions of euros in EU aid two years ago – to its neighbor Romania, which joined the EU at the same time as Bulgaria. Those European Commission reports about Bulgarian organized crime and crooked Bulgarian businessmen embezzling EU funds are suddenly looking very 2008: This year, the report criticized Romania’s politicians for their lackadaisical approach to stamping out corruption, and chided the government for reining in a key anti-corruption agency.

Both countries, however, were criticized for their murky public procurement processes, their listless judiciaries and their toothless conflict of interest rules.

In other news from southeast Europe:

Int’l: Outgoing UN oversight head blasts Ban’s business as usual

The outgoing official in charge of fighting corruption at the UN trashed UN head Ban Ki-moon for undermining her office in a 50-page memo that leaked last week. Swedish diplomat Inga-Britt Ahlenius, who’s just completed her five-year term as head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), pulled no punches, using words like “deplorable” and “reprehensible.” Here’s more, from Ha’aretz:

"Your action is without precedent," wrote the former comptroller, "Your actions are… reprehensible…and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself."

The senior diplomat did not restrict herself to politically correct language in her complaints against Ban: "I regret to say that the [UN] Secretariat now is in a process of decay. It is not only falling apart.… It is drifting into irrelevance."

Ban’s top advisers pooh-poohed Ahlenius’s memo in the Washington Post, but the paper also reported that Ahlenius is hardly the only one who’s pointed out problems with the OIOS:

The departure of Ahlenius, 72, coincides with a period of crisis in the United Nations' internal investigations division. During the past two years, the world body has shed some of its top investigators. It has also failed to fill dozens of vacancies, including that of the chief of the investigations division in the Office of Internal Oversight Services. That post has been vacant since 2006, leaving a void in the United Nations' ability to police itself, diplomats say.

"We are disappointed with the recent performance of [the U.N.'s] investigations division," said Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations. "The coming change in . . . leadership is an opportunity to bring about a significant improvement in its performance to increase oversight and transparency throughout the organization."

Just days after the memo leaked, Ban launched a review of the OIOS and nominated a Canadian former head auditor for the World Bank to lead the agency.

In other international news, the US is now requiring energy and mining companies registered in the country to disclose their payments to the US and to foreign governments. The provision was included in a financial reform law that US President Barack Obama signed into law last week, and it’s supposed to mean big changes to the way companies do business. According to the White House press secretary:

This provision is an essential new tool in promoting transparency in the oil and mineral sectors.  This legislation will immediately shed light on billions in payments between multinational corporations and governments, giving citizens the information they need to monitor companies and to hold governments accountable.  It will shine a sustained light on the relationship between corporations and governments in the oil and mineral sectors, and make impossible the kind of back-room dealings that cost taxpayers in lost royalties.

Peter Maass, a journalist and author whose most recent book deals with sleaze and evil in the global oil industry, called the new rules “great news for the international transparency movement.”