Search Results for: Greece

BY MARK ROWE

INTERNATIONAL organisations are admitting organised crime has penetrated the government of Kosovo, right to the top. Leaked NATO documents have identified Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaçi as "one of the biggest fish" in organised crime, noting other Kosovan politicians’ involvement in prostitution, weapons and drugs smuggling.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE FUEL pipeline network around the Caspian and Black Seas increasingly resembles a London Underground map, a comparison enhanced by the latest potential addition to the lattice, known as the AGRI scheme.

AGRI, the acronym for the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector, is a proposal for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) transportation across the Black Sea.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHEN the offices of the Czech Republic’s registry for the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS) received a fake bomb threat on January 18, it was an annoying interruption for some Prague office workers. But when returning to their desks, they realised their real bomb had gone off in their computer terminals.…

BY MARK ROWE

LEAKED NATO documents have indicated that the prime minister and senior officials in Kosovo have close links to organised crime. That presents a daunting challenge to law enforcement officials, but their task is made more problematic by the pervasive nature of corruption in the country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission may this year release proposals to reduce the vulnerability of the European Union’s (EU) emissions trading system (ETS) to fraud. Cyber-criminals launched a lucrative attack on its systems in January. How open is this ground-breaking system to fraud?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A CANADIAN-owned Greek mining company will have to pay EUR15.3 million, plus interest, to the Greek government, after the European Commission decided it had been originally privatised on the cheap. Brussels has ruled that Ellinikos Xrysos paid too little when it bought gold, copper, zinc, lead and silver mines in the Cassandra area, Chalkidiki region, northern Greece.…

BY LEE ADENDOORF, ALYSSA MCMURTRY, MAKKI MARSEILLES, and KEITH NUTHALL

GLOBAL olive oil manufacturing is on a roll, with the International Olive Council (IOC) saying 2009-10 world production was 3.02 million tonnes, a season-on-season increase of 354,500 tonnes (+13%). This would be the second best olive oil production year ever, next only to the record of 3.17 million tonnes produced in 2003/04.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has blocked the merger of Greece’s two main airlines Aegean Airlines and Olympic Air, fearing a "quasi-monopoly". The companies offered take-off and landing slots to boost competition, but the Commission noted "Greek airports do not suffer from the congestion observed at other European airports…"The deal would have increased fares for four million European passengers flying to and from Athens annually given the carriers’ 90% control of Greece’s domestic air transport market, said Brussels.…

BY MARK ROWE and E BLAKE BERRY

GIVEN Poland’s reputation as a reliable member of the international community, it is perhaps surprising Poland was (until 2009 at least) reckoned by the European Commission and the US Department of State to have one of the EU’s poorest records for tackling money laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, ALAN OSBORN, MJ DESCHAMPS, MARK ROWE, RENDAN DE BEER, MAKKI MARSEILLES

IT has been a real slog – persuading the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states to implement detailed plans to manage their water resources on a river basin basis, rather than artificial political boundaries bearing little relation to hydrology.…