Official police involvement in car theft ring from Moldova

Cars stolen in Europe have turned up in Moldova where government officials facilitated false registrations

PRAGUE (Tiraspol Times) - An international network of car thieves whose destination was Moldova has been broken up by Czech police. The car theft ring stole luxury vehicles in the European Union and brough them to Moldova where government contacts would "fix" the paperwork and prepare the stolen cars for resale to unsuspecting buyers.

The Czech police broke up a large international gang of car thieves on Sunday, arresting 26 perpetrators from Moldova and other former Soviet Union countries, including two policemen.

As reported by DPA, some 350 law enforcement officers participated in the crackdopwn following an 11-month investigation.

The gang stole cars in the Czech Republic and other EU member states and delivered them to clients in Moldova. Detective Pavel Jandak told reporters that the police uncovered 36 car thefts involving damage of 21 million Czech crowns ($1=21.680 crowns).

This is one of the largest cases of this kind in recent years. A total of 13 people have been taken into custody. The police have frozen several millions of crowns on the suspects' accounts.

The well-organised gang comprised members with Moldovan government connections. For fear of leaking advance information about the operation, Czech police did not alert their counterparts in Moldova about the bust until after it had already happened.

Pridnestrovie: Independent with separate fraud-proof license plates

According to DPA, the investigation found that two long-serving, criminal-police detectives had cooperated with the ring. Although Moldovan involvement was rampant, and most of the stolen cars ended up in Moldova, there was no criminal wrongdoing by police or other officials from Pridnestrovie. None of the cars were sent to Pridnestrovie, since the unrecognized country uses a separate, independent system of car registration which has nothing to do with Moldova.

Motor vehicles in Pridnestrovie - also known as Transnistria - are easily identified by the country's own license plate, complete with the red and green flag and a holographic security measure designed to prevent auto theft. The car plates are said to be among the most fraud proof and technologically advanced in Europe.

After declaring independence in 1990, the Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica, PMR, established its own department of motor vehicles and started issuing its own license plates, separate from those of Moldova. Aware of the rampant fraud and corruption within the Moldovan car registration systems, citizens in Pridnestrovie prefer their own tamper-proof plates.

Official Moldovan involvement in crime

Illegal organ trafficking in Moldova is so common that authorities turn a blind eye to it, and sometimes participate in the lucrative trade. In the south of Moldova, entire villages exist where every single inhabitant has been "under the knife" as part of the illegal organ trade. Some die in the process. But in Menzhi, Kagule and Chimishlii, the local leaders defended the trade by saying: Either we sell our organs or we starve. In the rough world of today's Moldova, those are often the only two alternatives left to a people whose kleptocratic elite has all but forgotten the plight of the population in the countryside.

Throughout 2005 and 2006, human rights groups have repeatedly confirmed that Moldovan police and other government officials are direct beneficiaries of the lucrative trade in organs.

Moldova, Europe's poorest country, is often called a proto-state of thoroughly criminalized links between political groups and international drug runners, many with Muslim connections. On 14 May 2006, Pridnestrovie's border control arrested members of a Moldovan drug gang and confiscated a haul of narcotics bound for Ukraine. Among the arrested: Julian Kalos, an active-duty police officer of the Republic of Moldova whose duties were to combat narcotics traffic. (With information from DPA)

See also:
» Moldova plane crash in Iraq tied to insurgency arms smuggling

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