LOC18:24
15:24 GMT
BERNE, June 25 (KUNA) -- The Swiss federal police (Fedpol) situation report
2009 identifies major forms of organized crime and details organized crime
groups that are relevant to Switzerland.
The annual report of the Swiss FEDPOL launched on Friday pointed many
threats faced the country last year such as drug and human trafficking, money
laundering and cyber criminality.
These groups hailed from Italy, CIS countries, Georgia, southeastern
Europe, and West Africa.
"In 2009 organized crime groups from countries other than these were active
in Switzerland too, or were otherwise involved in underhand dealings linked in
some way or another to Switzerland," said the experts.
For instance, there we reorganized criminal groups from the Dominican
Republic dealing in cocaine, and Chinese criminal groups that, time and again,
were involved in human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and credit card fraud.
Besides these were groups from Lebanon, North Africa, Turkey and Jamaica
that were chiefly into drug dealing.
Organized crime groups especially from West Africa, eastern and
southeastern Europe, and Georgia engaged predominantly in street crime such as
street drug dealing, burglary, and robbery.
Essentially, money laundering is the follow-up act to profitable criminal
activities. A great many of the proceedings conducted by the Swiss Attorney
General's Office in 2009 involved investigations into money laundering
offenses.
Most of these investigations were made in connection with criminal
organizations and predicate offenses to white-collar crimes such as fraud and
bribery. The main difficulty in money laundering investigations is not
gathering evidence of a suspicious transaction, but rather in investigating
the predicate offence.
This is especially the case if the criminal offense was committed abroad.
Switzerland has lost nothing of its appeal to people traffickers as a target
and transit country.
Most of the victims of sexual exploitation in 2009 originated from Eastern
Europe, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. There was a noticeable
increase in the number of Hungarian women who had fallen prey to people
traffickers, and a temporary surge in the traffic in women from Nigeria.
Information technology and electronic means of communication have become
indispensable both in business and private life. Criminals are increasingly
knowledgeable about state-of-the-art IT applications, availing themselves of
the Internet to plan and carry out classical criminal offenses, safely, free,
around the world, and without leaving a trace.
The possibility of communicating with others in word, picture, and
sound-anonymously, encrypted, and the world over - is essential to all stages
of planning crime. Furthermore, one-click hosters allow data to be uploaded
easily and anonymously via a Web site and to be made available to others. (end)
ta.sd
KUNA 251824 Jun 10NNNN