Mafia
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Bulgaria: ‘A warning shot’
30 January 201316PresseuropStandart -
France : A new army of ghosts haunts Corsica
1 November 201220822 Le Monde Paris -
Spain: Chinese mafia’s “state within a state”
24 October 201249513 El País Madrid -
Lithuania-Russia: Stubbing out Kaliningrad’s illicit cigarette trade
27 September 2012484 15min Vilnius -
Crime: Brussels to crack down on mob
13 March 2012501PresseuropDagens Nyheter
Never mind Sicily or Naples, the most crime-ridden European region is what the French call "the Isle of Beauty" — Corsica. There, nationalists and racketeers, who are sometimes one and the same, are regularly felled by bullets. A journalist from French daily Le Monde took a “murder tour” of the sites of these crimes that everyone knows about but which are cloaked in a shroud of silence.
The arrest of the “godfather” of the Chinese mafia in Spain in mid-October has lifted the veil on crime within the community and reflects the power, complexity and international cohesion of these criminal groups.
In spite of the installation of increasingly sophisticated surveillance equipment, Lithuanian authorities are still struggling to eradicate a highly lucrative cross-border traffic in cigarettes with the neighbouring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Their task is made all the more difficult by the wide variety of interests served by the illegal trade.