In Albania, corruption has long been part of everyday life. People talk of taking a loved one to hospital and having to pay the doctor to get the best treatment, or of going to a property registration office and being asked to pay an extra “fee” to speed things up. This culture of bribery has […]

Former judge of the Appellate Court of Montenegro, Milivoje Katnic, has been unanimously elected the Chief Special Prosecutor of the newly formed Special Public Prosecutor`s Office, dubbed Montenegrin USKOK (named after the Croatian Bureau for Combating Corruption and Organised Crime). At the session of the Prosecution Council, chaired by the Supreme State Prosecutor, Ivica Stankovic, […]

Bulgarian Prime Minister put an equality sign between the terms corruption and smuggling. ”Corruption and smuggling are one and the same thing,” said Borisov over a round-table entitled ”For Economy in the Light”. In his view, EU-funded projects are always being monitored by a number of institutions, while this is not the case with smuggling. […]

The Croatian authorities have given 14 Croatian citizens ten days to prove the origin of 225 million euro in savings, deposited in foreign bank accounts. Croatia’s tax administration and Office for the suppression of corruption and organised crime, USKOK, has given 14 people holding the 20 largest accounts in banks in 19 EU countries ten […]

This will be something for the books of violent dispute. A series of gun battles over the weekend on May 9-10, lasting over 16 hours have left eight police officers and fourteen gunmen dead in the town of Kumanovo in Macedonia. The slain police were members of the anti-terrorist Tigers unit. The Macedonian police authorities […]