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rightsinexile · 7 years

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Neither here, nor there: Georgian refugees from Abkhazia

Dmitry Okrest writes about the fate of ethnic Georgian refugees from the breakaway territory of Abkhazia in Open Democracy Russia, 24 August 2017. Translated by Liz Barnes. This is reprinted with permission.

In the Soviet period Abkhazia, a balmy region on the Black Sea coast and popular summer destination among the USSR’s elites, enjoyed autonomous status within the Georgian republic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ethnic Abkhaz with some Russian support fought a brutal war against the Georgian government in 1992-93. The catastrophe left more than 250,000 Georgians (who had constituted a majority in the region) homeless. In August 2008, Russia recognised the territory as independent – the overwhelming majority of states consider it part of Georgia.

No home away from home

The houses in the Georgian village of Orsantia line the road into Abkhazia, a mere 200 metres away past the border crossing point. Of the village’s 3,500 inhabitants, 1,400 are ethnic Georgian refugees from the unrecognised republic, who fled their homes during the conflict.

The centre of this small settlement consists of a grocery store, a local administrative building and some half-derelict structures, one of which hosts the office of Egrisi. It’s an NGO supporting both the displaced population and Georgians who have managed to remain in Abkhazia to this day (they still form a majority in the region’s southernmost Gali district, bordering Georgian government-controlled territory). Egrisi’s activities range from providing grants to set up bakeries and building greenhouses for local families.

Until 1992, Egrisi’s head Tsitsino Biblaia lived in the nearby Gali district, where she taught at a school. After the conflict broke out, she was forced to flee to Zugdidi, the capital of Georgia’s Samegrelo province to the west. She tells me how, when the conflict broke out, local officials insisted that nothing was happening and told people not to panic: “I was sitting in the school, filling out my daily journal, and suddenly there was turmoil. People were running around, not knowing where to go. So I ended up with my husband and children, in another town. I still haven’t come to terms with it.”

The Georgian Civil War of 1991-93 broke out after Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister, returned to Tbilisi and came to power. Tense relations between the new president and supporters of his predecessor, the first president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, turned into open confrontation. The fighting was accompanied by inter-ethnic conflict in Abkhazia (1992-3) and South Ossetia (1989-92). The civilian population began to leave the conflict zones in huge numbers.

As a result of the war, both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another former autonomous region within the Georgian SSR, declared their independence. Given that the government in Tbilisi still regards both territories as part of Georgia, official documents refer to the refugees as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Most of these IDPs live in areas bordering the two breakaway states: Samegrelo, Imereti and Shida Kartli, or otherwise in Tbilisi. According to Georgia’s Ministry for Refugees and Resettlement, more than 265,000 IDPs (about 6% of the population) are live in a country which has already seen its population drain away due to labour migration to Russia and the EU.

A closed border

The war was long ago, but the arrangements for the collective resettlement of forced IDPs are still in place. Only a few refugees have been able to start new lives: the vast majority are still dependent on government handouts. Many of them still live in difficult circumstances – usually in old sanatoriums and holiday camps. In Kutaisi, for example, one building still houses several refugee families, now including children and grandchildren. The rooms are in total disrepair, with cardboard replacing the earlier glass in the windows.

As the years pass, it is also becoming ever more difficult for the Georgians who were forced out of Abkhazia to visit their relatives and their old homes in the unrecognised republic. In March 2016, the Abkhazian authorities closed two border crossing points on the Inguri River, which serves as the border with the breakaway territory. A year later the same thing happened in the villages of Otobaia and Nabakia, leaving only one central crossing point - across the Inguri River bridge.

Locals say that it now takes at least three hours to cross the border. What’s more, only people who have kept their old Soviet passports with their Abkhazian residence stamps or have a special pass issued by the Abkhazian authorities can cross freely. Anyone without the the right papers has to get an official invitation from their friends or relatives and pay for a visa. Up to March 2017 the whole business was free and took 15 minutes, according to locals.

Russian citizens don’t need a foreign passport to visit Abkhazia, so Georgian border officials can’t monitor their visits to the unrecognised republic, but under Georgian law they are formally forbidden. To avoid breaking the law on occupied territories (Georgia considers Abkhazia to be under Russian occupation), citizens of CIS and EU countries have to enter it from the Georgian side. Some Russians friends of mine, however, have been refused entry through Georgia and recommended to enter the territory from Russia (in 2014 the intrepid traveller and blogger Aleksandr Lapshin, who has joint Russian and Israeli citizenship, managed to visit Abkhazia this way, although not without problems; he has recently been sentenced by court in Azerbaijan to three years in prison for visiting another self-declared state, the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh).

In Nabakia today, on the Abkhazian side of the old bridge, fencing mesh has been put up between the concrete piers and the concrete blocks massively reinforced. There are no official border guards on the Georgian side, since Tbilisi doesn’t recognise the bridge as a legal border (though police SWAT teams in full combat gear patrol the area).

“People from Abkhazia used to be able to come across here without any problems”, 56 year old Tsitsino Biblaia tells me. There were even minibuses going back and forth to the crossing from both sides. As the border officers were Abkhazians, they were more flexible. But then they brought Russians in, and now the controls are much stricter. They don’t take bribes, either, so there’s no more smuggling stuff across.”

Despite the closure of the crossing points, some Abkhazians still slip across the border to buy their food. There are crowds of them Zugdidi market every morning. Back in the day, the Abkhazians used to be traders themselves, selling nuts and mandarins. Since the authorities in Abkhazia’s de-facto capital of Sukhumi have introduced export duties, so there’s no money in that anymore.

Soft power, Georgian-style

Many families still live in two houses: according to Biblaia, the elderly generally prefer to stay on the Abkhazian side of the bridge, while the youth prefer the Georgian side. Some refugees who are officially registered as living in one of the border villages actually live in Tbilisi, but receive various social benefits thanks to their refugee status.

“The state hands out grants for university education, and provides free medical assistance and benefits,” says Bibilaia. It’s an open secret that people living in the unrecognised republic also go to Georgia for their healthcare needs; provision in Abkhazia is not adequate, but to be seen by a Georgian doctor, you’ll need a Georgian passport. Many people try to keep this quiet, she continues, as they might get into trouble at home. At the moment, Ukraine is trying to set up a similar scheme for citizens who continue to live in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Irakli Khubua, who also works for Egrisi, tells me that most refugees still don’t feel at home: “There are mixed marriages, but people still feel like outsiders.” One factor here is the refugees’ densely crowded accommodation and the fact that their status gives them access to extra social welfare payments. In Gori, for example, there are whole neighbourhoods entirely populated by refugees.

“Some even prefer not to marry”, says Khubua, “so as not to lose their refugee status and the benefits that come with it.” NGOs are also involved in preserving memories, recording the exact locations the Georgians fled from. In Georgia, the most important element in this process is the Abkhazeti Centre. In conjunction with the Danish Refugee Council and with EU financial support, Abkhazeti has coordinated the construction of homes for refugees since 2016, as part of a state programme for sustainable resettlement. However, says Nino Mindiashvili, who heads the “Ray of Hope” NGO, this kind of aid is often a disincentive to work (provided that employment can be found anyway). “The men have got used to getting handouts; now it’s just the women who work while the men prefer to wait for their benefits cheques,” sighs Nino.

Keeping the roots strong

One tradition which knows no borders holds that burial rites should take place in a family cemetery. Tsitsino Biblaia, for example, walked 11 km into Abkhazia in secret, in order to bury a family member. “We didn’t all have the necessary documents, so my brother and I carried the zinc coffin, containing all 165 kg of him, along winding forest paths. Once on the other side, Abkhaz villagers – total strangers – came out to help us.” The wish to be buried on one’s forefathers’ land at all costs remains as normal to IDPs as it is bizarre to outsiders.

Nevertheless, for many children of IDPs, Abkhazia has become a foreign country. Young people who have grown up in Kutaisi or Tbilisi are mainly interested in finding work and somewhere to live. For them Tskhinvali, Ochamchire, or Gali are just names lodged in their memories, toponyms from the land of their ancestors.

“My great-grandchildren were born here. My granddaughter came here to live when she was three years old,” says Zhuna Biblaia, who also lives in Orsantia. “With each generation, people forget where they came from. Perhaps my great-grandsons will know that their roots are in Abkhazia, but they’ll otherwise be completely integrated in Georgian society.”

Every day, Zhuna comes to look after her great-grandsons at the two-storey hostel that the authorities have provided for the IDPs. Apart from an Ikea cupboard in the hallway, the atmosphere and decoration reeks of the Soviet era, with carpets hanging on the walls and china figurines on the shelves. The flat is heated by a cast-iron stove; there is one shower per floor, water from a well and some of the neighbouring flats are abandoned, their windows smashed. These refugees have been living here for a quarter century, but don’t want to renovate or redecorate anything themselves.

“We’re not big spenders and we don’t want any favours from the state, but why won’t it do anything for us?” asks schoolteacher Rimma, another resident of the hostel. “When the state wants to do something, it gets on with it. But they obviously don’t see any need to make this place look decent. They only remember about us on important dates!”

Rimma fled Abkhazia after she and some others were surrounded by armed Abkhaz soldiers while gathering nuts. One of the nut-pickers tried to run away and when the Abkhazians ran after him, she and her husband escaped. She tells me that she doesn’t hold any grudges: many Abkhaz saved their lives more than once during the conflict. “I’m ready to forgive them: even if they did wrong, I’ll be the first to extend my hand in peace,” she says. Rimma recalls how friends phoned their telephone numbers back in Sukhumi, and strangers picked up the phone: “People would ask the occupants to look after their house, wept and then phoned another number.”

Ordinary Georgians I spoke to blamed everyone except their own government for what happened back in the early 1990s. For their part, international observers also report that crimes were committed against peaceful civilians by both sides of the conflict. Many people still launch into geopolitical debates: some blame Gorbachev, others Putin.

Leah Tchlachidze, who runs the Ergneti Rehabilitation and Development Centre and moved from South Ossetia to Georgia after the five day long Russo-Georgian War in 2008, believes that one of the main reasons for the prolonged conflict has been the Georgian government’s policy towards ethnic minorities.

“In 1991-2, when President Gamsakhurdia was in power, armed men arrived here from Tbilisi, but the local Georgians asked, ‘Why? We don’t need protecting,’” Tchlachidze tells me. After that war things seemed to quieten down, although there were constant acts of provocation on both sides – we can’t deny we were equally to blame – they fired at us and we fired back. Then in 2008 we had [Mikheil] Saakashvili’s little gamble on a lightning strike.”

Tsitsino Biblaia, on the other hand, blames Russia for initiating the conflict and maintaining a heightened state of tension: “We’d never had any experience of war, and suddenly here we were, with Georgians fighting against Georgians; Abkhazians against Abkhazians, and everyone against everyone else. It was an internecine war. But the Abkhazians had never had any problems or complaints before. They probably still want independence, but it would be easier for us to come to an agreement with them if the Russian troops left. How can we go back home now? I haven’t even considered it. I’d come back to my old house, and a stranger would be living in it. I couldn’t throw him out – it would take a war to do that.”

According to Biblaia, her children were very anti-Russian for a long time, blaming them for the whole situation. “I tried to explain to them that I had Russian friends who helped me, and that no single ethnicity should be blamed for the war. Now my son watches Russian films with me, to learn the language.” Tsitsino tells me that she has managed to explain to her children that there is a difference between ordinary Russians, Russian culture and the Russian government: “but Georgians have less and less contact with Russians; all we can remember is the war – especially people like us who lost our homes because of it.”

Hope without cause?

I have visited Georgia a number of times, and have probably spent a total of over two months there. I’ve mostly hitchhiked from place to place, and Russo-Georgian relations – especially the conflict with Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 – have inevitably come up in my conversations with drivers.

Despite the deaths of innocent people at the hands of Russian forces, the break in official diplomatic relations between Russia and Georgia and the appearance of the self-proclaimed South Ossetian and Abkhazian republics, I have always found Georgians friendly and well-disposed towards me as a Russian. In most cases they have welcomed an opportunity to speak Russian again, criticising both governments for their military escapades.

Perhaps, if the Russian government was a bit more far-sighted, it could turn this mood to its advantage. But today’s Georgians are increasingly looking to the west, what with visa-free travel to the EU and a NATO training centre just outside Tbilisi.

The position of the IDPs remains, however, unresolved, and they are unlikely to return home in the near future. In the present unstable situation they have few options: they can either sit across the border, yearning to return to their lost homes or move to the capital to earn money and start a new life. While there, they can try to retain their identity as Georgians from Abkhazia. After all, in Georgia, everybody wants to know where your roots lie.

#Neither here nor there: Georgian refugees from Abkhazia #abkhazia #georgia #october #2017

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nedsvallesny · 5 years

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Alleged Chief of Romanian ATM Skimming Gang Arrested in Mexico

An alleged top boss of a Romanian crime syndicate that U.S. authorities say is responsible for deploying card-skimming devices at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) throughout North America was arrested in Mexico last week on firearms charges. The arrest comes months after the accused allegedly ordered the execution of a former bodyguard who was trying to help U.S. authorities bring down the group’s lucrative skimming operations.

On Mar. 31, police in Cancun, Mexico arrested two Romanian men, identified only as 42-year-old “Florian N” and 37-year-old “Adrian Nicholae N,” 37, for the possession of an illegal firearm and cash totaling nearly 500,000 pesos (~USD $26,000) in both American and Mexican denominations.

An uncaptioned photo published by the Mexican police. According to multiple sources, the individual on the left is Intacash boss Florian Tudor, along with his deputy Nicholae Cosmin.

The two men’s faces were partially obscured in the mugshots released to Mexican media. But according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, the older man arrested (pictured on the left) is Florian “The Shark” Tudor, reputed to be in charge of a relatively new ATM company based in Mexico called Intacash. The man on the right has been identified as Nicholae Cosmin, Tudor’s deputy.

Intacash was the central focus of a three–part investigation KrebsOnSecurity published in September 2015. That story tracked the activities of a crime gang that was bribing and otherwise coercing ATM technicians to install sophisticated Bluetooth-based skimmers inside cash machines throughout popular tourist destinations in and around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula — including Cancun, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.

Meanwhile, Intcash’s machines were about the only ATMs in top tourist spots in Mexico that weren’t getting compromised with these bluetooth skimming devices.

Law enforcement and ATM industry sources cited in that story said they believe Intacash is controlled by Romanian nationals and that its key principals were the ones paying ATM technicians to compromise machines at competing ATM providers.

As I discovered in reporting that series, it was possible to tell which ATMs were compromised in Mexico’s top tourist spots just by approaching each with a smart phone and looking for the presence of a Bluetooth signal beaconing out a wireless network with the name “Free2Move”.

This functionality allowed the crime syndicate to siphon credit and debit card details and PINs from hacked ATMs wirelessly, without ever again having to touch the compromised machines (see the video below for more on that investigation).

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In April 2018, KrebsOnSecurity heard from a Romanian person who claimed to have been working for Intacash. This individual seemed extremely concerned for their safety, but at the same time eager to share details about the company’s operations and owners.

The source shared photographs of Intacash’s chief deputies, as well as screenshots of card data allegedly hoovered up by the company’s various skimming operations. The source repeatedly told me the Romanian gang was paying large sums of money to Mexican authorities to stay off their radar.

The last time I heard from that source was June 2018, just after a like-minded associate at Intacash was shot dead in his car. The associate, 44-year-old Sorinel Constantin Marcu, was already wanted on a warrant from Interpol, the international criminal police organization.

In 2014, a Romanian court issued a criminal warrant for Marcu on allegations of attempted murder back in his hometown of Craiova, Romanian’s 6th-largest city. But Marcu was able to flee to Mexico before he could be tried. The court later convicted Marcu in abstentia, leveling a sentence of eight years in prison.

On the evening of June 11, 2018, Marcu was shot in the head, reportedly while trying to kidnap a businessman in Mexico, according to multiple media accounts. A street surveillance video of the incident published by Romanian daily Gazeta de SUD shows a Dodge Nitro allegedly driven by Marcu hitting the businessman’s parked car.

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The businessman manages to flee, and the passenger in Marcu’s vehicle briefly starts after him, before returning to the picture a few seconds later. Marcu’s passenger gets back in the vehicle, which then moves out of view of the security camera.

“Later, one of the businessman’s guards came out of the house and shot several gun shots in the car driven by Marcu, and he was killed on the spot,” Gazeta reported.

My source’s last communication was that they had tried to reach out to U.S. federal investigators but hadn’t had much luck. The source wanted the name and a number of someone to talk to at the FBI or Secret Service.

That source also said corrupt Mexican authorities were complicit in changing the news media narrative of what happened to Sorinel Marcu.

“Hi Brian do you have some news about your contact? Because the person who was going to testify now is dead,” my source wrote. “The boss of the gang do it, who I told you kill him, now he pay a lot of money to change the real story, and now that Cancun’s police work for him. Because the maybe guilty stayed 24 hours arrested (or less) for homicide. Please if this week you can do something for us, help us!”

Searching for others who might have knowledge of the shooting, I found a Facebook posting by Marcu’s brother — Aurelio Marcu — who commented on a Facebook video recorded shortly after Marcu’s execution in which bystanders can be heard telling those approaching the car not to move his brother’s body. The video was posted by a Mexican news channel, which reported the men questioned by police in connection with the incident were carrying Russian passports.

“They are from Romania, not Russia,” Aurelio Marcu wrote in a comment on the video, saying the boss of the gang is a guy named Tudor Florin, also known as “Rechinu” or “shark” in Romanian.

Police in Puerto Morelos seized weapons and a Cadillac Escalade from Romanians Florian Tudor and Nicholae Cosmin. Image: Riviera-maya-news.com.

In an interview with KrebsOnSecurity, Aurelio Marcu said his younger brother was killed in front of a new apartment complex being built and paid for by Mr. Tudor, and that the dead man’s body was moved to his car to make it look like he was slain there instead. He also said his brother and the passenger in the Dodge Nitro were following a man who worked in Tudor’s crew, not some random businessman.

“He was unarmed, and if you look at the pictures in the papers from his death, you can see he is wearing flip flops when he was shot,” Aurelio Marcu said, speaking through an interpreter. “How can you go kidnap someone wearing flip flops and with no weapon?”

BAD BODYGUARD

Marcu the elder said his dead brother long served as Tudor’s personal bodyguard, but at some point the two had a falling out over the money and women. Marcu said things got really tense between Tudor and his brother when the latter began sabotaging Intacash’s operations by applying superglue to the PIN pads and card acceptance slots of Intacash ATMs throughout Cancun.

A warrant for Constantine Sorinel Marcu, on attempted murder charges. Marcu was shot and killed in June 2018, allegedly by Mr. Tudor and/or his associates.

Marcu said Tudor’s crew had tried once before to kill his brother, but only managed to seriously wound him in a knife attack that ruptured his spleen.

Asked why he believes Florian Tudor was responsible for his brother’s death, Marcu said Sorinel “was an impediment for them, and Mr. Tudor was afraid that he would talk to the police.”

Marcu said Tudor and his associates are working with criminal syndicates in China, India and Indonesia to help cash out credit and debit card accounts stolen via Intacash’s extensive ATM skimming operations. He also said Mr. Tudor is reputed to keep up to USD $50,000 in cash on hand at all times, just in case he needs to buy himself out of a sticky situation with the police.

“This is so that if anything happens to him, he has a window to escape,” Marcu said. “He used to brag that he had days when he was making like $200,000 a day doing all this ATM and fake credit cards stuff.”

Additionally, Marcu said Mr. Tudor is working on building a theme park in the Puerto Morelos area of Quintana Roo, a Mexican state on the Yucatan Peninsula that encompasses Cancun and other tourist areas close by.

Aurelio Marcu says he and his brother are from the the same hometown as Tudor and his crew — Craiova, Romania, and that he’s been living under active protection from the Romanian police out of fear for his life.

Marcu is doubly worried now because he’s recently learned that both Tudor and Cosmin made bail on the weapons charges. He believes they are probably trying to figure out how to quietly wind down their operations in Mexico and flee the country.

KrebsOnSecurity has learned that Tudor and others alleged to be part of the Romanian ATM skimming ring in Mexico are the target of a more wide-ranging FBI investigation into the alleged Romanian crime family. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment.

According to people briefed on the investigation, Mexico is a central hub for hundreds of people from Romania who have moved into tourist areas of Mexico to help execute various ATM skimming and money laundering schemes there and across the border in the United States.

Those officials describe the Romanian crime network in Mexico as part of a far larger criminal syndicate that has foot soldiers who are ready and able to execute ATM skimming attacks throughout North America and in virtually every major U.S. city.

Sources say Romanian intelligence services also have been keeping tabs on this group’s operations south of the U.S. border — specifically on Mssrs. Tudor and Cosmin, as well as the now-deceased Sorinel Marcu.

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/alleged-chief-of-romanian-atm-skimming-gang-arrested-in-mexico/

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amberdscott2 · 5 years

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Alleged Chief of Romanian ATM Skimming Gang Arrested in Mexico

An uncaptioned photo published by the Mexican police. According to multiple sources, the individual on the left is Intacash boss Florian Tudor, along with his deputy Nicholae Cosmin.

Meanwhile, Intcash’s machines were about the only ATMs in top tourist spots in Mexico that weren’t getting compromised with these bluetooth skimming devices.

youtube

“Later, one of the businessman’s guards came out of the house and shot several gun shots in the car driven by Marcu, and he was killed on the spot,” Gazeta reported.

That source also said corrupt Mexican authorities were complicit in changing the news media narrative of what happened to Sorinel Marcu.

Police in Puerto Morelos seized weapons and a Cadillac Escalade from Romanians Florian Tudor and Nicholae Cosmin. Image: Riviera-maya-news.com.

BAD BODYGUARD

A warrant for Constantine Sorinel Marcu, on attempted murder charges. Marcu was shot and killed in June 2018, allegedly by Mr. Tudor and/or his associates.

Marcu said Tudor’s crew had tried once before to kill his brother, but only managed to seriously wound him in a knife attack that ruptured his spleen.

Asked why he believes Florian Tudor was responsible for his brother’s death, Marcu said Sorinel “was an impediment for them, and Mr. Tudor was afraid that he would talk to the police.”

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/alleged-chief-of-romanian-atm-skimming-gang-arrested-in-mexico/

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jennifersnyderca90 · 5 years

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Alleged Chief of Romanian ATM Skimming Gang Arrested in Mexico

An uncaptioned photo published by the Mexican police. According to multiple sources, the individual on the left is Intacash boss Florian Tudor, along with his deputy Nicholae Cosmin.

Meanwhile, Intcash’s machines were about the only ATMs in top tourist spots in Mexico that weren’t getting compromised with these bluetooth skimming devices.

youtube

“Later, one of the businessman’s guards came out of the house and shot several gun shots in the car driven by Marcu, and he was killed on the spot,” Gazeta reported.

That source also said corrupt Mexican authorities were complicit in changing the news media narrative of what happened to Sorinel Marcu.

Police in Puerto Morelos seized weapons and a Cadillac Escalade from Romanians Florian Tudor and Nicholae Cosmin. Image: Riviera-maya-news.com.

BAD BODYGUARD

A warrant for Constantine Sorinel Marcu, on attempted murder charges. Marcu was shot and killed in June 2018, allegedly by Mr. Tudor and/or his associates.

Marcu said Tudor’s crew had tried once before to kill his brother, but only managed to seriously wound him in a knife attack that ruptured his spleen.

Asked why he believes Florian Tudor was responsible for his brother’s death, Marcu said Sorinel “was an impediment for them, and Mr. Tudor was afraid that he would talk to the police.”

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/alleged-chief-of-romanian-atm-skimming-gang-arrested-in-mexico/

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terabitweb · 5 years

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Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs

An uncaptioned photo published by the Mexican police. According to multiple sources, the individual on the left is Intacash boss Florian Tudor, along with his deputy Nicholae Cosmin.

Meanwhile, Intcash’s machines were about the only ATMs in top tourist spots in Mexico that weren’t getting compromised with these bluetooth skimming devices.

“Later, one of the businessman’s guards came out of the house and shot several gun shots in the car driven by Marcu, and he was killed on the spot,” Gazeta reported.

That source also said corrupt Mexican authorities were complicit in changing the news media narrative of what happened to Sorinel Marcu.

Police in Puerto Morelos seized weapons and a Cadillac Escalade from Romanians Florian Tudor and Nicholae Cosmin. Image: Riviera-maya-news.com.

BAD BODYGUARD

A warrant for Constantine Sorinel Marcu, on attempted murder charges. Marcu was shot and killed in June 2018, allegedly by Mr. Tudor and/or his associates.

Marcu said Tudor’s crew had tried once before to kill his brother, but only managed to seriously wound him in a knife attack that ruptured his spleen.

Asked why he believes Florian Tudor was responsible for his brother’s death, Marcu said Sorinel “was an impediment for them, and Mr. Tudor was afraid that he would talk to the police.”

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Go to Source Author: BrianKrebs Alleged Chief of Romanian ATM Skimming Gang Arrested in Mexico Original Post from Krebs on Security Author: BrianKrebs An alleged top boss of a Romanian crime syndicate that U.S.

#Krebs on Security

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newstfionline · 7 years

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As Economy Grows, North Korea’s Grip on Society Weakens

By Choe Sang-Hun, NY Times, April 30, 2017

SEOUL, South Korea--Despite decades of sanctions and international isolation, the economy in North Korea is showing surprising signs of life.

Scores of marketplaces have opened in cities across the country since the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, took power five years ago. A growing class of merchants and entrepreneurs is thriving under the protection of ruling party officials. Pyongyang, the capital, has seen a construction boom, and there are now enough cars on its once-empty streets for some residents to make a living washing them.

Reliable economic data is scarce. But recent defectors, regular visitors and economists who study the country say nascent market forces are beginning to reshape North Korea--a development that complicates efforts to curb Mr. Kim’s nuclear ambitions.

Even as President Trump bets on tougher sanctions, especially by China, to stop the North from developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the United States, the country’s improving economic health has made it easier for it to withstand such pressure and to acquire funds for its nuclear program.

While North Korea remains deeply impoverished, estimates of annual growth under Mr. Kim’s rule range from 1 percent to 5 percent, comparable to some fast-growing economies unencumbered by sanctions.

But a limited embrace of market forces in what is supposed to be a classless society also is a gamble for Mr. Kim, who in 2013 made economic growth a top policy goal on par with the development of a nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Kim, 33, has promised his long-suffering people that they will never have to “tighten their belts” again. But as he allows private enterprise to expand, he undermines the government’s central argument of socialist superiority over South Korea’s capitalist system.

There are already signs that market forces are weakening the government’s grip on society. Information is seeping in along with foreign goods, eroding the cult of personality surrounding Mr. Kim and his family. And as people support themselves and get what they need outside the state economy, they are less beholden to the authorities.

“Our attitude toward the government was this: If you can’t feed us, leave us alone so we can make a living through the market,” said Kim Jin-hee, who fled North Korea in 2014 and, like others interviewed for this article, uses a new name in the South to protect relatives she left behind.

After the government tried to clamp down on markets in 2009, she recalled, “I lost what little loyalty I had for the regime.”

Kim Jin-hee’s loyalty was first tested in the 1990s, when a famine caused by floods, drought and the loss of Soviet aid gripped North Korea. The government stopped providing food rations, and as many as two million people died.

Ms. Kim did what many others did to survive. She stopped showing up for her state job, at a machine-tool factory in the mining town of Musan, and spent her days at a makeshift market selling anything she could get her hands on. Similar markets appeared across the country.

After the food shortage eased, the market in Musan continued to grow. By the time she left the country, Ms. Kim said, more than 1,000 stalls were squeezed into it alongside her own.

Kim Jong-il, the father of the North’s current leader, had been ambivalent about the marketplaces before he died in 2011. Sometimes he tolerated them, using them to increase food supplies and soften the blow of tightening sanctions imposed by the United Nations on top of an American embargo dating to the Korean War. Other times, he sought to suppress them.

But since 2010, the number of government-approved markets in North Korea has doubled to 440, and satellite images show them growing in size in most cities. In a country with a population of 25 million, about 1.1 million people are now employed as retailers or managers in these markets, according to a study by the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

Unofficial market activity has flourished, too: people making and selling shoes, clothing, sweets and bread from their homes; traditional agricultural markets that appear in rural towns every 10 days; smugglers who peddle black-market goods like Hollywood movies, South Korean television dramas and smartphones that can be used near the Chinese border.

At least 40 percent of the population in North Korea is now engaged in some form of private enterprise, a level comparable to that of Hungary and Poland shortly after the fall of the Soviet bloc, the director of South Korea’s intelligence service, Lee Byung-ho, told lawmakers in a closed-doorbriefing in February.

This market activity is driven in part by frustration with the state’s inefficient and rigid planned economy. North Koreans once worked only in state farms and factories, receiving salaries and ration coupons to buy food and other necessities in state stores. But that system crumbled in the 1990s, and now many state workers earn barely a dollar a month. Economists estimate the cost of living in North Korea to be $60 per month.

“If you are an ordinary North Korean today, and if you don’t make money through markets, you are likely to die of hunger,” said Kim Nam-chol, 46, a defector from Hoeryong, a town near the Chinese border. “It’s that simple.”

Before fleeing in 2014, Mr. Kim survived as a smuggler in North Korea. He bought goods such as dried seafood, ginseng, antiques and even methamphetamine, and he carried them across the border to sell in China. There, he used his earnings to buy grain, saccharin, socks and plastic bags and took it back to sell in North Korean markets.

He said he had paid off border guards and security officers to slip back and forth, often by offering them cigarette packs stuffed with rolled-up $100 or 10,000-yen bills.

“I came to believe I could get away with anything in North Korea with bribes,” he said, “except the crime of criticizing the ruling Kim family.”

Eighty percent of consumer goods sold in North Korean markets originate in China, according to an estimate by Kim Young-hee, director of the North Korean economy department at the Korea Development Bank in the South.

But Kim Jong-un has exhorted the country to produce more goods locally in an effort to lessen its dependence on China, using the word jagang, or self-empowerment. His call has emboldened manufacturers to respond to market demand.

Shoes, liquor, cigarettes, socks, sweets, cooking oil, cosmetics and noodles produced in North Korea have already squeezed out or taken market share from Chinese-made versions, defectors said.

Regular visitors to Pyongyang, the showcase capital, say a real consumer economy is emerging. “Competition is everywhere, including between travel agencies, taxi companies and restaurants,” Rüdiger Frank, an economist at the University of Vienna who studies the North, wrote recently after visiting a shopping center there.

A cellphone service launched in 2008 has more than three million subscribers. With the state still struggling to produce electricity, imported solar panels have become a middle-class status symbol. And on sale at some grocery stores and informal markets on the side streets of Pyongyang is a beverage that state propaganda used to condemn as “cesspool water of capitalism”--Coca-Cola.

When Kim Jong-un stood on a balcony reviewing a parade in April, he was flanked by Hwang Pyong-so, the head of the military, and Pak Pong-ju, the premier in charge of the economy.

The formation was symbolic of Mr. Kim’s byungjin policy, which calls for the parallel pursuit of two policy goals: developing the economy and building nuclear weapons. Only a nuclear arsenal, Mr. Kim argues, will make North Korea secure from American invasion and let it focus on growth.

Mr. Kim has granted state factories more autonomy over what they produce, including authority to find their own suppliers and customers, as long as they hit revenue targets. And families in collective farms are now assigned to individual plots called pojeon. Once they meet a state quota, they can keep and sell any surplus on their own.

The measures resemble those adopted by China in the early years of its turn to capitalism in the 1980s. But North Korea has refrained from describing them as market-oriented reforms, preferring the phrase “economic management in our own style.”

In state-censored journals, though, economists are already publishing papers describing consumer-oriented markets, joint ventures and special economic zones.

It is unclear how much of recent increases in grain production were due to Mr. Kim’s policies. Defectors say factories remain hobbled by electricity shortages and decrepit machinery while many farmers have struggled to meet state quotas because they lack fertilizer and modern equipment.

More broadly, the economy remains constrained by limited foreign investment and the lack of legal protections for private enterprise or procedures for contract enforcement.

Plans to set up special economic zones have remained only plans, as investors have balked at North Korea’s poor infrastructure and record of seizing assets from foreigners, not to mention the sanctions against it.

But there is evidence that the state is growing increasingly dependent on the private sector.

Cha Moon-seok, a researcher at the Institute for Unification Education of South Korea, estimates that the government collects as much as $222,000 per day in taxes from the marketplaces it manages. In March, the authorities reportedly ordered people selling goods from their homes to move into formal marketplaces in an effort to collect even more.

“Officials need the markets as much as the people need them,” said Kim Jeong-ae, a journalist in Seoul who worked as a propagandist in North Korea before defecting.

Ms. Kim fled North Korea in 2003 but has kept in touch with a younger brother there whom she describes as a donju, or money owner.

Donju is the word is what North Koreans use to describe the new class of traders and businessmen that has emerged.

Kim Jeong-ae said that her brother provided fuel, food and crew members for fishing boats, and that he split the catch with a military-run fishing company.

“He lives in a large house with tall walls,” she added, “so other people can’t see what he has there.”

Called “red capitalists” by South Korean scholars, donju invest in construction projects, establish partnerships with resource-strapped state factories and bankroll imports from China to supply retailers in the marketplaces. They operate with “covers,” or party officials who protect their businesses. Some are relatives of party officials.

Others are ethnic Chinese citizens, who are allowed regular visits to China and can facilitate cross-border financial transactions, and people with relatives who have fled to South Korea and send them cash remittances.

Whenever the state begins a big project, like the new district of high-rise apartment buildings that Kim Jong-un unveiled before foreign journalists in April, donju are expected to make “loyalty donations.” Sometimes they pay in foreign currency. Sometimes they contribute building materials, fuel or food for construction workers.

“Kim Jong-un is no fool,” said Kang Mi-jin, a defector who once ran her own wholesale business. “He knows where the money is.”

Donju often receive medals and certificates in return for their donations, and use them to signal they are protected as they engage in business activities that are officially illegal.

They import buses and trucks and run their own transportation services using license plates obtained from state companies. Some donju even rent farmland and mines, working them with their own employees and equipment, or open private pharmacies, defectors said.

“Donju wear the socialist hide, operating as part of state-run companies,” Ms. Kang said. “But inside, they are thoroughly capitalist.”

Before Kim Jong-un took power, the government made a last attempt to rein in donju and control market forces. It called on citizens to shop only in state stores, banned the use of foreign currency and adopted new bank notes while limiting the amount of old notes that individuals could exchange.

The move wiped out much of the private wealth created and saved by both donju and ordinary people. Market activity ground to a near halt. Prices skyrocketed, and protests were reported in scattered cities.

The government eventually retreated and is believed to have issued an apology when officials convened villagers for their weekly education sessions. It also executed the country’s top monetary official, Pak Nam-gi.

The crisis is widely considered the moment when the government concluded it could no longer suppress the markets. A year later, Pak Pong-ju, a former prime minister who had been ousted for pushing market-oriented policies, was restored to power. He now manages the economy under Mr. Kim.

As the markets develop, growing numbers of North Koreans will see the vastly superior products made overseas and perhaps question their nation’s backward status.

“Thanks to the market, few North Koreans these days flee for food, as refugees in the 1990s did,” said the Rev. Kim Seung-eun, a pastor who has helped hundreds of defectors reach South Korea. “Instead, they now flee to South Korea to have a better life they learned through the markets.”

Jung Gwang-il, who leads a defectors’ group in Seoul called No Chain, said that with more North Koreans getting what they needed from markets rather than the state, their view of Mr. Kim was changing.

“North Koreans always called Kim Jong-un’s grandfather and father ‘the Great Leader’ or ‘the General,’” Mr. Jung said. “Now, when they talk among themselves, many just call Jong-un ‘the Kid.’ They fear him but have no respect for him.”

“They say, ‘What has he done for us?’” Mr. Jung said.

#North Korea #North Korean economy #Kim Jong-un

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