Operation Java
The operation Java was an international cooperation between police departments and prosecutor against organized Georgian crime in Europe. Among other things, it was based on an Interpol-Grüneck tender by the Austrian authorities. With a total of 15 final convictions for involvement in a criminal organization (Section 278a StGB ), Operation Java came to an official conclusion in Austria in October 2011.
At the beginning of 2009, the National Court of Justice in Spain initiated an investigation against an organized gang of Georgian criminals, so-called Thieves in Law ( Georgian კანონიერი ქურდები ), who also stole goods on a large scale in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Spain Had committed business. The national police authorities had independently started investigations in their countries.
prehistory
In September 2006, after years of preliminary investigations in Austria, the Georgian "thief in the law" Zaal Macharoblidze (alias: Glechovitsch) was arrested and convicted in January 2008 of extortion and involvement in a criminal organization. Another Georgian “thief in the law” Zaza Elikashvili came to Austria to continue the criminal activity of Macharoblidze. In the summer of 2009, investigators at the Austrian BKA were informed by Swiss colleagues about the arrest of Elikashvili, who had been stopped with a forged Bulgarian passport. The Swiss authorities found that Elikashvili had several brigades in different regions of Switzerland, collected all income from criminal activities of his brigades and brought them personally to Spain, which is why Switzerland submitted a legal assistance request to Spain. Around the same time the Austrian BKA received a call from Germany because the Austrians had knowledge of Kahaber Shushanashvili, who had taken over a criminal group in Spain after the Spanish operation "Avispa II", and the Spanish OC authorities had one in this regard Addressed request to the Germans. The Austrian BKA confirmed that Elikashvili was in regular telephone contact with Shushanashvili during his stay in Austria. In the meantime, the German authorities discovered that, like in Switzerland, Georgian mafia groups in Germany were also sending funds to Spain. After the money had gone through the money laundering system installed by the Russian mafia in Spain , it was then transferred via Austria to Georgia and Russia. On July 28, 2009, the German and Austrian investigators met with the criminalists in Spain. Due to the explosive nature of the ascertained facts, the top-secret "Operation Java" was brought into being with the involvement of Spanish, German, Swiss and Austrian OC investigators and the regional prosecutors. The participating countries carried out this operation as an act of closure, because contacts between the Mafia members and high-ranking officials across Europe were feared.
Actions in Europe
The arrests in the six European countries began at 6 a.m. on March 15, 2010 and included at least 76 suspects. The head of the gang Lasha Shushanashvili, who is in Greece, was able to evade arrest by the Greek police. He was supposed to be in a hotel in Thessaloniki on Monday , but could not be picked up by the police there. 48 were arrested or arrested in Austria, 24 in Spain, 22 in Germany, 11 in Switzerland and four in Italy. In France, a murder plot by gang members was uncovered.
Manhunt in Germany
In Germany, according to the department head Mario Huber of the LKA Bayern , 41 objects were searched and 17 people arrested in the federal states of Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The search measures in Germany were led by the State Criminal Police Office in Bavaria. The execution of the manhunt was in the hands of the Kempten public prosecutor . A 27 year old Georgian asylum seeker was arrested in Munich as the so-called governor of the gang in Germany.
On March 15, 2010, 20 tons of stolen goods were seized. 120,000 euros and the gang's cash books were also confiscated. In Bochum alone , the police were able to register several tons of cigarettes, cosmetics and spirits as stolen goods. The members of the gang sold the stolen goods and had to deliver the sales proceeds in the order of several thousand euros per month to the governor in Munich. From Munich, the money was then transferred to the gang's headquarters in Barcelona .
Search in Austria
The director of the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office (BK), Franz Lang, announced on March 16, 2010 that gang members had committed around 30 percent of burglaries in Vienna alone . The gang members have committed hundreds of break-ins and thousands of thefts. Since the summer of 2009, the Special Commission East (SoKo Ost) had arrested 330 so-called gang soldiers as thieves in Austria, who came from Georgia . 172 police officers were involved in the manhunt on March 15, 2010. The police officers came from the Cobra commando , the WEGA special unit of the Vienna police, the BK and the state criminal investigation offices from Burgenland, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Tyrol and Vienna. SoKo Ost first made contact with the Spanish police in the course of the investigation.
The department head in the BK for Investigations, General and Organized Crime Ernst Geiger reported that in Vienna alone 37 kilograms of jewelry were stolen by the gang in the two previous weeks in a street. In Vienna, two governors of the gang who were staying there as asylum seekers could also be arrested. The gang members are accused of membership in a criminal organization, armed robbery, assault, extortion, land theft, stolen goods, money laundering and burglary.
Manhunt in Spain
This operation was the third in Spain since 2000 against Russian and Georgian gangs. In Spain alone, more than 100 members of the gangs were arrested. As announced by the deputy head of government María Teresa Fernández de la Vega , the leaders of the gangs had their homes on the coast of Spain. Objects were searched and arrests made in the cities of Madrid, Bilbao, Valencia and Barcelona. Lasha Shushanashvili's brother, Kakhaber Shushanashvili, was arrested northeast of Barcelona. He is classified by the police as the head of the western European branch of the gang.
The police were able to confiscate false passports and a pistol from those arrested.
Organization of the gang structure
The structure of the Georgian gang forms a secret society. At the top is the thief in the law . He's about like a godfather to the Italian mafia. In this now broken gang, there were three of the rank of thief in the law as an inner leadership circle. Two of these leaders were arrested during the 2005 and 2006 search.
The inner management team also determines who is allowed to move up from the lowest level of the organization to the second management level. These form the so-called governors , also called brigade leaders, who collect the profits from criminal crimes and pass them on to the leadership circle. A group between the second and third management level is called the onlookers (Russian smotryashchy ), who are supposed to control the lower layer of the gang.
The thieves in the law also arbitrate conflicts within the gang and also take the gang's strategic actions.
The gang members communicated with each other in a coded manner via radio and e-mail. In their thefts and raids, they used stolen vehicles and wore bespoke suits so as not to attract the attention of the police during manhunt. It was the duty of the gang members to pay contributions into a kind of community fund (called Obschtschjak ). This fund then supported members of the gang who were arrested.
literature
- Gavin Slade: Understanding the Emergence, Mobility, and Specificity of Georgian Organized Crime Groups in Europe since 2006. In: Ursula Töttel, Gergana Bulanova-Hristova, Gerhard Flach (Eds.): Research Conferences on Organized Crime at the Bundeskriminalamt in Germany. Vol. VIII, Transnational Organized Crime 2013–2015, p. 63 ff. (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Elena Scherschneva-Koller: Operation Java diekriminalisten.at, accessed on September 16, 2018
- ↑ Walter Kegö, Alexandru Molcean: Russian Speaking Organized Crime Groups in the EU , Institute for Security and Development Policy, March 2011, pp. 32 ff, ISBN 978-91-86635-05-3 , accessed on May 26, 2020.
- ↑ Elena Scherschneva-Koller: Operation Java diekriminalisten.at, accessed on May 27, 2020.
- ↑ Sarah Rainsford: Georgian 'mafia boss' slips Europe-wide police raid BBC , March 16, 2010 (English)
- ↑ Georgian mafia boss 'eludes' Greek police ekathimerini.com, March 17, 2010 (English)
- ↑ A Europe-wide strike against the Georgian mafia Hamburger Abendblatt , March 17, 2010
- ↑ Rudolf Stumberger: Organized Crime: How the Mafia Clans Bavaria divided among themselves World , April 17, 2011
- ↑ Police strike against the Mafia: Georgian godparents arrested in Austria news.at, March 16, 2010
- ^ How the Georgian Mafia Works Die Presse , March 16, 2010