Nine to Five

As of today, I’m a covert banking operative. I’ve been inserted into the corporate office of a large bank. My job is to follow the money and identify key players. Mother has reason to believe that associates of the Bulgarian diplomat I identified about a week ago are involved in some not-so-legal dealings.

My full case background should be coming within the next few days, but here are the highlights:

- Bulgaria ‘s 2009 Corruption Index Score is 71st out of 180.
- Bulgaria’s perception of corruption value is lower than where it was a few years ago.
- A BBC news story discussing the EU’s concern can be found here.

“Tackling corruption and organized crime was supposed to be a pre-condition for Bulgaria's membership of the EU. But just over a year after it joined, three streams of EU funding have been suspended because of apparent fraud, and the EU's investigating agency has 45 cases of alleged Bulgarian malpractice on its books” (C. Miller, BBC News, 18Mar08).

When the police crack down on an illegal activity the perpetrators will need to work harder to maintain that source of income. If the EU is forcing Bulgarian law enforcement to investigate corruption in Bulgaria, the money making crimes will have to shift somewhere else. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole…which, given the links to corruption and the mafia, is quite a nice play on words if I do say so myself.

Where do you live?


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"Sharing a Drink They Call Loneliness"

There are two types of people in the world. People you trust and people that can get you killed. I used this afternoon to catch up with someone of the former category.

James Piston and I were assigned to a team a few years back monitoring the interface between organized crime and tax paying society. Our target was Salvo, an Italian restaurateur who paid his staff in cash and tended to purchase from companies with indirect ties to certain syndicates. Despite claiming that the red clam sauce was homemade, the restaurant was staying mostly legal. But based on the sourcing of various goods, however, it was possible that Salvo might be ‘urged’ to buy exclusively from mafia sponsored companies at above market costs then be forced to siphon remaining profits back. If we could understand how this dynamic worked, Mother could open a restaurant of her own and broil meatballs of organized crime.

James and I had drink and caught up.

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