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THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2017 INTERNATIONAL ‘Russian organized crime’ poses a News in brief threat to democratic institutions Brussels terror raids BRUSSELS: Four people have been arrested, and arms cache found after overnight terror raids in Brussels Probe draws attention to Russian skullduggery linked to a bikers’ club called the Kamikaze Riders, feder- al prosecutors said yesterday. “During one of the house WASHINGTON: The US government has long warned that along with two officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service you’re looking for.” Federal prosecutors continue to bring searches, various weapons were found. In all, four per- Russian organized crime posed a threat to democratic in a cyberattack on Yahoo Inc. in 2013. It’s too early to traditional organized crime cases, such as one last month in sons were arrested and taken in for questioning,” prose- institutions, including “criminally linked oligarchs” who know how Russian criminal networks might fit into the New York charging 33 members and associates of a Russian cutors said in a statement. A spokesman said the raids might collude with the Russian government to under- election meddling investigation, but central to the probe crime syndicate in a racketeering and extortion scheme were linked to the Kamikaze Riders, which has been mine business competition. Those concerns, ever-present are devastating breaches of Democratic email accounts, that officials say involved cargo shipment thefts and efforts implicated in terror offences. A source close to the inves- if not necessarily always top priorities, are front and cen- including those of the Democratic National Committee to defraud casinos. But there’s a heightened awareness tigation said the raids in the gritty Anderlecht district ter once more. and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. about more sophisticated cyber threats that commingle the found at least two Kalashnikov assault rifles while An ongoing special counsel investigation is drawing US authorities have blamed those hacks on Russian interests of the government and of criminals. reports spoke of explosives also being discovered. The attention to Russian efforts to meddle in democratic intelligence services working to discredit Clinton and help “An organized criminal group matures in what they statement from prosecutors said the raids were “com- processes, the type of skullduggery that in the past has Trump - but have said the overall effort involved third-par- do,” said retired FBI assistant director Ron Hosko. “What pletely independent” from the probe into the deadly relied on hired hackers and outside criminals. It’s not clear ty intermediaries and paid internet trolls. Former law they once did here through extortion, some of these November 2015 Paris and March 2016 Brussels attacks, how much the investigation by former FBI Director Robert enforcement officials say Russian organized crime has been groups are now doing through cyberattack vectors.” which were claimed by Islamic State and carried out by Mueller will center on the criminal underbelly of Moscow, a concern for at least a couple of decades, though not nec- Within the Justice Department, it’s been apparent since jihadi cells based in the Belgian capital. Meanwhile in but he’s already picked some lawyers with experience essarily the most pressing demand given finite resources the collapse of the Soviet Union that crime from that ter- northern France, a joint Franco-Belgian anti-terrorist fighting organized crime. And as the team looks for any and budget constraints. The threat is diffuse and complex, ritory could affect national security in Europe and the US operation picked up a man on suspicion of having links Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe was years ago a to the Kamikaze Riders. supervisory special agent of a task force created to deal with Eurasian organized crime. A 2001 report from the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, a research arm, called America “the land of opportunity for unloading criminal goods and laundering dirty money.” It said crime groups in the region were establishing ties to drug trafficking networks, and that “criminally linked oligarchs” might work with the government to undermine competition in gas, oil and other strategic markets. Three months later came the Sept. 11 attacks, and the FBI, then under Mueller’s leader- ship, and other agencies left no doubt that terrorism was the most important priority. “I recall talking to the racket- eering guys after that and them saying, ‘Forget any focus now on organized crime,’” said James Finckenauer, an author of the report. Besides cyber threats, Justice Department officials in recent years have worried about the effect of unchecked international corruption, creating a kleptocracy initiative to recover money plundered by government leaders for their own purposes. In 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder pledged the Justice Department’s commitment to recoup- ing large sums believed to have been stolen during the regime of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president chased from power that year. NEW YORK: Emergency personnel stand near the That effort led to an FBI focus on Paul Manafort, the scene where a police officer was shot in the Bronx WASHINGTON: Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russian interference in the 2016 Trump campaign chairman who did political consulting section of New York yesterday. Police said Officer election, departs Capitol Hill following a closed door meeting in Washington. — AP work on behalf of Yanukovych’s pro-Russia political party Miosotis Familia died at a hospital yesterday. — AP and who remains under scrutiny now. But those same for- financial entanglements of Trump associates and relation- and Russia’s historic lack of cooperation has complicated eign links have also made cases hard to prove in court. In NY cop fatally shot ships with Russian officials, its focus could land again on efforts to apprehend suspects. many instances, foreign criminal hackers or those spon- NEW YORK: A New York City police officer was shot the intertwining of Russia’s criminal operatives and its And the responsibility for combating the problem often sored by foreign governments - including China, Iran and to death yesterday morning, ambushed in a marked intelligence services. falls across different divisions of the FBI and the Justice Russia - have remained out of reach of American authori- patrol car by a man with a revolver who was later Russian organized crime has manifested itself over the Department, depending on whether it’s a criminal or ties. In some cases, judges have chastised US authorities for killed by officers. Officer Miosotis Familia, a 12-year decades in more conventional forms of money laundering, national security offense - a sometimes-blurry boundary. prosecutorial overreach in going after international targets. member of the department, was assigned with a credit card fraud and black market sales. Justice “It’s not an easy thing to kind of grasp or understand, but A San Francisco federal judge, for instance, in 2015 dis- partner to a mobile command post when the man Department prosecutors have repeatedly racked up con- it’s very dangerous to our country because they have so missed an indictment involving two Ukrainian business- fired one round through the window and struck her victions for those offenses. In recent years, though, the many different aspects, unlike a traditional cartel,” said men who’d been accused of bribing an official at a United in the head as she was wrapping up her shift. She bond between Russian intelligence agencies and criminal Robert Anderson, a retired FBI executive assistant director Nations agency responsible for creating standards for was rushed to a hospital but did not survive. “This networks has been especially alarming to American law who worked counterintelligence cases and oversaw the machine-readable international passports. The judge said was an unprovoked direct attack on police officers enforcement officials, blending motives of espionage with criminal and cyber branch. he couldn’t understand how the government could apply a who were assigned to keep the people of this city more old-fashioned greed. “You have to know where to look, which makes it more foreign bribery law to conduct that had no direct connec- safe,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill said. Her In March, for instance, two hired hackers were charged complicated,” he added. “And you have to understand what tion to the US. — AP partner radioed for help, and officers responded fast, encountering the suspect, 34-year old Alexander Bonds, about a block away, he said. As they confront- Rights icon Simone Veil secures ed him, he pulled a revolver, and police fired, striking and killing him. A silver revolver was found at the coveted place in the Pantheon scene. A bystander was hit in the stomach by a bullet during the standoff, and is in stable condition, police PARIS: French Holocaust survivor and 1927, Veil was arrested by the Gestapo in said. Bonds had been on parole for a robbery case in rights icon Simone Veil, who died last week March 1944 and deported to Auschwitz with Syracuse, New York, police said. aged 89, will receive the rare honor of one of her sisters and her mother Yvonne. being inducted into the Pantheon, The two girls, who were put to work in a President Emmanuel Macron announced at concentration camp, survived-as did anoth- her funeral yesterday. Veil will become only er sister who was deported for her part in Murderer’s death sentence the fifth woman to be laid to rest in the the French Resistance. Her mother suc- COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s High Court handed the death Paris monument, which houses the remains cumbed to typhoid in Belsen just before sentence yesterday to a laborer who was found guilty of great national figures, and only the that camp was liberated in 1945, and her of murdering former Agence France-Presse journalist fourth to be allocated a spot on her own father and brother were last seen on a train Mel Gunasekera in a break-in at her home.

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