Organized crime

Five people died and 16 were injured in an explosion Sunday in the Ecuadoran port city of Guayaquil in an attack the government blamed on organized crime, officials said.

President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency in the country's second largest city of Guayaquil, where eight houses and two cars were destroyed in the blast.

Asked by BIRN whether it saw any issue in the fact prosecutors had not used anti-mafia legislation against Gjini or Shkalla, the Prosecution against Corruption and Organised Crime, SPAK, said it had "no comment on the matter." The law should be applied to both men automatically.

The Belgrade Court of Appeal has quashed the first-instance verdict which sentenced indicted drugs smuggler Darko Saric and 12 members of his group for laundering at least 20 million euros in Serbia and ordered a retrial.

Infamous drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, was captured on July 15 by Mexican forces nearly a decade after walking out of a Mexican prison and returning to drug trafficking, Mexico's navy said.

In an operation codenamed "Rez" ("Cut") Bosnian police on Tuesday arrested Elvis Kelmendi, son of the controversial Kosovo-born figure Naser Kelmendi, and six other suspects, for organised crime in connection with international smuggling and illegal trafficking in drugs as well as other crimes.

The death toll of undocumented migrants who were abandoned in a scorching-hot trailer in Texas rose to 51 Tuesday, as President Joe Biden blamed "criminal" professional smugglers for the tragedy.

Rebeca Clay-Flores, a Bexar County official, reported the new tally of "39 men and 12 women" dead, following the Monday discovery of the tractor-trailer on an isolated road in her district.

Football hooliganism is closely linked to politics, nationalism, violence and organized crime in the Western Balkans, a report says, with the highest links noted in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Montenegrin Customs officers seize tobacco in the Port of Bar. Photo: Government of Montenegro

The Customs Office said it seized eight containers with 4,000 boxes of tobacco owned by a US company, Lenora International, registered in the US state of Delaware.

Cooperation Conflicts

The West Balkan countries' flags at a Western Balkan Conference in the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, April 29, 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/MIKA SCHMIDT / POOL

A growing number of Albanian crime figures are finding refuge and laundering money in the United Arab Emirates, knowing that authorities in Albania and elsewhere in Europe will struggle to secure their extradition.