FBIS3-21961
"jptdd012__l94086"
JPRS-TDD-94-012-L
Document Type:JPRS
Document Title:Narcotics
21 March 1994
WEST EUROPE
REGIONAL AFFAIRS
Dresden Conference Views Growth of Organized Crime in Europe
AU1803173194 Berlin DIE WELT in German 18 Nar 94 p 2
AU1803173194
Berlin DIE WELT
Language: German
Article Type:BFN
[Markus Lesch report: "In The Throes of Crime"]
[Text] International crime is gaining increasing control
over Germany's eastern neighbors. Organized crime is
establishing itself in Poland and the Czech Republic along its
path to Western markets, with Germany as the objective. The
eastern laender can feel this already.
"In those countries, organized crime wants to earn its fare
to come to Germany, so to speak, and is establishing permanent
infrastructures there," said Saxony's Interior Minister Heinz
Eggert at an international conference on internal security in
Dresden.
"Western European crime is quickly spreading to the East,"
warned the president of the Czech Criminal Police Colonel Jan
Vaculik. The most significant organized crime rings in the
Czech Republic are groups of people from the Russophone area.
"These groups are virtually impossible to overcome. They
enforce silence with brutal methods, similar to those used by
the Mafia in relation to the Omerta," Vaculik explained.
Contacts between this "Russo-Mafia" and Italian groups have
been documented. Crime bosses from Naples and Moscow have
already met in Prague in order to organize the smuggling of
cocaine. The strongest Italian group is the notorious Camorra
from Naples. Vaculik: "We have information that the Camorra
wants to expand even further, to Russia and Estonia."
The third organized crime group consists of the Chinese
"Flying Dragons and `K-14' from New York, who extort protection
money and deal in transfers of human cargo from the Far East to
Germany and Western Europe.
Warnings signals are also coming from Poland, especially
regarding drugs. "Poland has become a laboratory for synthetic
drugs," says Janusz Wolny of the Polish Interior Ministry. "In
addition, there are increasing quantities of cocaine from South
America, heroin from the Near, Middle, and Far East, and
marijuana from Africa." The quantity of drugs seized in 1993
was double the 1992 figure.
The brutality of the criminal elements is growing at an
alarming rate. In 1993, in fights alone, there were 185 heavy
offenses, including 56 homicides, 31 kidnappings, and 38 attacks
with firearms or grenades.
Even in Dresden, a hand grenade blew up in front of a police
precinct. "The violence is going to get even bigger because of
the involvement of criminal groups from CIS and the Czech
Republic on the prostitution scene," warns Peter Raisch,
president of the Saxon Criminal Office.
The Mafia lawyer Teresa Principato from Palermo confirmed
the
growing interest of Italian crime groups in East Europe and the
German market. "Eastern Germany is a favorite place for money
laundering," she said. "The police forces of the different
laender appreciate the importance of international cooperation
to fight crime. Now is the time for politics to follow suit,"
said Italy's best-known Mafia expert.