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Very disturbing. EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. Regardless of what the prime minister says, and we should assume his innocence, w

by flexie 9y ago

Very disturbing. EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. Regardless of what the prime minister says, and we should assume his innocence, we cannot assume that his government will investigate it when he's an obvious suspect. To make matters worse, Malta is a tiny island state where "everybody knows everybody". I was there just a few months ago and you can comfortably walk around the (stunningly beautiful) capital in a few hours and see the entire nation in a matter of days. While Malta supposedly has a great deal of corruption, it's not considered more corrupt than so many other member states in Southern and Eastern Europe, and quite frankly, it would be nice also in Western and Northern Europe to have a supranational investigative body in stead of or in addition to parliamentary hearings, commissions etc. that often require parliament majority which rests with the government parties anyways.

coldtea 9y ago
>EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. So, something like the Europol? (And there's also Interpol).
- lukasm 9y ago
  Europol budget is 1/80 of FBI's
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    FBI uses it's budget to spy on its own citizens (Prism) and interfere with political process. The budget is supposed to be small.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    FBI's budget should have been 1/80 of FBI's too -- the US has 25% of the world's prison population, with just 4% of the world's population.
    - Tepix 9y ago
      Wow, they are doing such a great job obviously! /s
    - jpatokal 9y ago
      The FBI is only a small part of the US criminal justice system. 90% of US prisoners are held in state or local prison, not federal ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
    - adventured 9y ago
      The FBI isn't a large part of the reason the US has so many people in jail & prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws are about 3/4 of the cause, along with treating drug addiction as a crime instead of as strictly a health concern is most of the rest of that (with all of it broadly falling under the war on drugs). The get-tough-on-crime (by putting everyone in prison) era, during the Reagan / Bush / Clinton years, is the root.
      - turk184 9y ago
        Plus, we have all now seen without any shadow of a doubt that the FBI mainly exists as a political enforcement apparatus and not so much as some kind of national investigative agency. Anything the FBI does that is not political looks like some afterthought to me.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Do you think the FBI is really driving incarceration? Federal prisoners are only ~10% of the US prison population and tend to be convicted of more serious crimes.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    And what does Europol does anyway? Are they actively involved in high profile investigations?
- pakitan 9y ago
  Europol's function is basically just coordination of the police forces in EU countries. It's not even close to a federal police force.
ptero 9y ago
It has some already. But they need real teeth to investigate crimes like this. But having unleashed, powerful agencies they do not control is hard to swallow for many politicians, so international anti crime agencies are often limited to advisory roles.
bkovacev 9y ago
I, personally, do not think that European countries that already harass other European countries should have even more power by creating a new supranational investigative body which they will consist of, that will only further assert their power over other member states.
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Already harass other countries? what??? So its best to just let a weak gov that gives EU citizenship to Russian mobster a free run?
- k__ 9y ago
  Can't they consist of people from all countries?
  - bkovacev 9y ago
    The original comment suggested countries only from Western and Northern Europe, thus my comment. I find it disturbing that this subtle discrimination is supported. I do not oppose the idea of all countries being involved.
    - caf 9y ago
      That's not what the original comment was suggesting - the line about Western and Northern Europe was that the author feels that such a supranational instigative body would also be helpful there.
      - bkovacev 9y ago
        Got it, sorry. I misinterpreted it. My apologies.
    - ginko 9y ago
      I believe you misread the post. I think what it meant to say was that such a police force would also be nice in Western and Northern Europe, where big cases of corruption usually lead to long winded hearings and commission processes and take years and years to investigate often ending with few concrete results.
projectant 9y ago
This is the type of crime, that by definition, nobody who has the power to investigate wants to investigate. This most likely was payback for exposing someone's offshore holdings, and the response was chosen to send a message: "Do not expose", and was done in such a bald-faced way that this crime's occurrence presupposes the existence of the very corruption needed to facilitate getting away with it, that any investigation would need to uncover. TL;DR - that a crime like this, which requires corruption to execute and get away with, can happen, presupposes the investigative apparatus is unable to investigate it, with high probability.
- tomp 9y ago
  Isn't the message more like "expose, but anonymously"? Well, I mean, hopefully that's how people would understand it.
  - dagw 9y ago
    Anonymous exposure doesn't carry the same weight and can easily get lost in shuffle. No one cares about a random page buried in Wikileaks until some journalist highlights its existence and starts making a lot of noise about it. I mean, from what I understand, this journalist was 'just' reporting on information that was already readily available to anyone willing to go through all the Panama Papers.
    - sneak 9y ago
      And yet somehow we have Fake Steve Jobs, The Grugq, and the Shadow Brokers. Pretty sure pseudonymity is just as effective for investigative reporting bylines as using an identifier tied to the address at which your family sleeps.
      - dagw 9y ago
        Pretty sure pseudonymity is just as effective for investigative reporting bylines as using an identifier tied to the address at which your family sleeps. I'm just not sure I believe that. Do you think the Snowden leaks, for example, would have had the same spread and impact if it was just an pseudonymous data dump and without someone like Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian adding a 'face' and legitimacy to the information?
ginko 9y ago
There's the European Public Prosecutor body intended to be established sometime soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor Malta doesn't seem to be in the list of participating countries, though. It's also only for financial fraud.
pavelludiq 9y ago
> EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. As an Eastern European EU citizen...fuuuuck no.
- rb2018 9y ago
  Why not? Most "Eastern European EU citizen" I know support this kind of idea... what is wrong with it? Corruption is bad, and I would not care if a French, German or Bulgarian national uncovers it.
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    I think a lot of people from the former Eastern Bloc don't like the idea of federal police because it sounds a bit close to some of the communist era policing.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      Communist era policing is local, opaque and with tendency for cover-ups. State wants prosecution to make their problems go away quietly. Federal police by definition has a lot of eyes on the process so it's the opposite.
  - pavelludiq 9y ago
    Because the EU should absolutely not become a superstate like the US, it should remain firmly an economic and political union and the less force it is capable of exerting, the better. That means no army and no police force? How Democratic can such structures be really? Also don't tell me western and northern states won't be privileged in such a scheme. It's us in the south and the east that are corrupt and can't handle our organized crime groups obviously.
    - pas 9y ago
      That's a nice pipe dream. But without force, it'll become irrelevant. It can be as Democratic as people make it. Western states are already privileged, they have the population advantage. Anyway, it's not like corruption (and market efficiency) analyses are just made up. Case in point, Hungary. Billions of euros went there and at least 30-40% got funneled to "friends and family". The good old Putin model. Dear Leader has nothing, his yearly wealth report is whiter than snow, his friends on the other hand .. well, they are the best businessmen on Earth: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/what-s-boosting-the-world-s-best-performing-stock https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/what-s-bo... The other "interesting" thing is that OLAF (the EU's anti-corruption office) found a lot of irregularities in Hungary, recommended investigations. And nothing happened. (The Prosecutor General of Hungary ... happens to be a good friend of those involved.) See also: https://budapestbeacon.com/olaf-says-hungary-misappropriated-9-7-million-worth-of-anti-fraud-funds/ https://budapestbeacon.com/olaf-says-hungary-misappropriated...
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
Will not happen, German politicians delay everything anti-corruption as long as absolutely possible.
cat199 9y ago
Yes, a supranational organization which draws its executive leadership from unelected politicians certainly needs to create an armed force with broad-stroke investigative powers in order to prevent corruption. That sounds like a fantastic idea! Exactly part of the EU meisterplan - 1st economic union, then, oh wait, that doesn't actually work without sacrificing national sovereignty.. guess we need to have a federal european government afte rall, and all the better if noone is elected. Heil das Heiliges Römisches Reich!
- Varcht 9y ago
  Maybe not so far fetched http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/59067 http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/59067
  - martin_a 9y ago
    Oh come on. Do you take those guys seriously?
- Dayshine 9y ago
  >draws its executive leadership from unelected politicians Eh? They work at the whim of the parliament don't they?
  - rdschouw 9y ago
    EU parliament is lame duck, the commission can ignore any resolution if they so please. Democracy in EU is only second order because commission is made up government representatives of each member.
- tertius 9y ago
  Bureaucracies grow larger and gain more power over time!? Can the EU be stopped? Nations will plead the 50th slowly over time. That's the only answer I believe is feasible.
- flexie 9y ago
  What's with the funny German? Are you saying you are an EU sceptic or are you mainly a germanophobe? You know that different dialects of German were just some of the many languages spoken in the Holy Roman Empire, and not the official ones, right? I agree that democracy in EU is far from perfect but no EU institution is beyond democratic control. All answer to democratly elected politicians.

by flexie 9y ago

coldtea 9y ago

>EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. So, something like the Europol? (And there's also Interpol).

lukasm 9y ago
Europol budget is 1/80 of FBI's
- Chris2048 9y ago
  FBI uses it's budget to spy on its own citizens (Prism) and interfere with political process. The budget is supposed to be small.
- coldtea 9y ago
  FBI's budget should have been 1/80 of FBI's too -- the US has 25% of the world's prison population, with just 4% of the world's population.
  - Tepix 9y ago
    Wow, they are doing such a great job obviously! /s
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    The FBI is only a small part of the US criminal justice system. 90% of US prisoners are held in state or local prison, not federal ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
  - adventured 9y ago
    The FBI isn't a large part of the reason the US has so many people in jail & prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws are about 3/4 of the cause, along with treating drug addiction as a crime instead of as strictly a health concern is most of the rest of that (with all of it broadly falling under the war on drugs). The get-tough-on-crime (by putting everyone in prison) era, during the Reagan / Bush / Clinton years, is the root.
    - turk184 9y ago
      Plus, we have all now seen without any shadow of a doubt that the FBI mainly exists as a political enforcement apparatus and not so much as some kind of national investigative agency. Anything the FBI does that is not political looks like some afterthought to me.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Do you think the FBI is really driving incarceration? Federal prisoners are only ~10% of the US prison population and tend to be convicted of more serious crimes.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  And what does Europol does anyway? Are they actively involved in high profile investigations?
pakitan 9y ago
Europol's function is basically just coordination of the police forces in EU countries. It's not even close to a federal police force.

ptero 9y ago

It has some already. But they need real teeth to investigate crimes like this. But having unleashed, powerful agencies they do not control is hard to swallow for many politicians, so international anti crime agencies are often limited to advisory roles.

bkovacev 9y ago

I, personally, do not think that European countries that already harass other European countries should have even more power by creating a new supranational investigative body which they will consist of, that will only further assert their power over other member states.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Already harass other countries? what??? So its best to just let a weak gov that gives EU citizenship to Russian mobster a free run?
k__ 9y ago
Can't they consist of people from all countries?
- bkovacev 9y ago
  The original comment suggested countries only from Western and Northern Europe, thus my comment. I find it disturbing that this subtle discrimination is supported. I do not oppose the idea of all countries being involved.
  - caf 9y ago
    That's not what the original comment was suggesting - the line about Western and Northern Europe was that the author feels that such a supranational instigative body would also be helpful there.
    - bkovacev 9y ago
      Got it, sorry. I misinterpreted it. My apologies.
  - ginko 9y ago
    I believe you misread the post. I think what it meant to say was that such a police force would also be nice in Western and Northern Europe, where big cases of corruption usually lead to long winded hearings and commission processes and take years and years to investigate often ending with few concrete results.

projectant 9y ago

This is the type of crime, that by definition, nobody who has the power to investigate wants to investigate. This most likely was payback for exposing someone's offshore holdings, and the response was chosen to send a message: "Do not expose", and was done in such a bald-faced way that this crime's occurrence presupposes the existence of the very corruption needed to facilitate getting away with it, that any investigation would need to uncover. TL;DR - that a crime like this, which requires corruption to execute and get away with, can happen, presupposes the investigative apparatus is unable to investigate it, with high probability.

tomp 9y ago
Isn't the message more like "expose, but anonymously"? Well, I mean, hopefully that's how people would understand it.
- dagw 9y ago
  Anonymous exposure doesn't carry the same weight and can easily get lost in shuffle. No one cares about a random page buried in Wikileaks until some journalist highlights its existence and starts making a lot of noise about it. I mean, from what I understand, this journalist was 'just' reporting on information that was already readily available to anyone willing to go through all the Panama Papers.
  - sneak 9y ago
    And yet somehow we have Fake Steve Jobs, The Grugq, and the Shadow Brokers. Pretty sure pseudonymity is just as effective for investigative reporting bylines as using an identifier tied to the address at which your family sleeps.
    - dagw 9y ago
      Pretty sure pseudonymity is just as effective for investigative reporting bylines as using an identifier tied to the address at which your family sleeps. I'm just not sure I believe that. Do you think the Snowden leaks, for example, would have had the same spread and impact if it was just an pseudonymous data dump and without someone like Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian adding a 'face' and legitimacy to the information?

ginko 9y ago

There's the European Public Prosecutor body intended to be established sometime soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor Malta doesn't seem to be in the list of participating countries, though. It's also only for financial fraud.

pavelludiq 9y ago

> EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. As an Eastern European EU citizen...fuuuuck no.

rb2018 9y ago
Why not? Most "Eastern European EU citizen" I know support this kind of idea... what is wrong with it? Corruption is bad, and I would not care if a French, German or Bulgarian national uncovers it.
- cjsuk 9y ago
  I think a lot of people from the former Eastern Bloc don't like the idea of federal police because it sounds a bit close to some of the communist era policing.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Communist era policing is local, opaque and with tendency for cover-ups. State wants prosecution to make their problems go away quietly. Federal police by definition has a lot of eyes on the process so it's the opposite.
- pavelludiq 9y ago
  Because the EU should absolutely not become a superstate like the US, it should remain firmly an economic and political union and the less force it is capable of exerting, the better. That means no army and no police force? How Democratic can such structures be really? Also don't tell me western and northern states won't be privileged in such a scheme. It's us in the south and the east that are corrupt and can't handle our organized crime groups obviously.
  - pas 9y ago
    That's a nice pipe dream. But without force, it'll become irrelevant. It can be as Democratic as people make it. Western states are already privileged, they have the population advantage. Anyway, it's not like corruption (and market efficiency) analyses are just made up. Case in point, Hungary. Billions of euros went there and at least 30-40% got funneled to "friends and family". The good old Putin model. Dear Leader has nothing, his yearly wealth report is whiter than snow, his friends on the other hand .. well, they are the best businessmen on Earth: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/what-s-boosting-the-world-s-best-performing-stock https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-25/what-s-bo... The other "interesting" thing is that OLAF (the EU's anti-corruption office) found a lot of irregularities in Hungary, recommended investigations. And nothing happened. (The Prosecutor General of Hungary ... happens to be a good friend of those involved.) See also: https://budapestbeacon.com/olaf-says-hungary-misappropriated-9-7-million-worth-of-anti-fraud-funds/ https://budapestbeacon.com/olaf-says-hungary-misappropriated...

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

Will not happen, German politicians delay everything anti-corruption as long as absolutely possible.

cat199 9y ago

Yes, a supranational organization which draws its executive leadership from unelected politicians certainly needs to create an armed force with broad-stroke investigative powers in order to prevent corruption. That sounds like a fantastic idea! Exactly part of the EU meisterplan - 1st economic union, then, oh wait, that doesn't actually work without sacrificing national sovereignty.. guess we need to have a federal european government afte rall, and all the better if noone is elected. Heil das Heiliges Römisches Reich!

Varcht 9y ago
Maybe not so far fetched http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/59067 http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/59067
- martin_a 9y ago
  Oh come on. Do you take those guys seriously?
Dayshine 9y ago
>draws its executive leadership from unelected politicians Eh? They work at the whim of the parliament don't they?
- rdschouw 9y ago
  EU parliament is lame duck, the commission can ignore any resolution if they so please. Democracy in EU is only second order because commission is made up government representatives of each member.
tertius 9y ago
Bureaucracies grow larger and gain more power over time!? Can the EU be stopped? Nations will plead the 50th slowly over time. That's the only answer I believe is feasible.
flexie 9y ago
What's with the funny German? Are you saying you are an EU sceptic or are you mainly a germanophobe? You know that different dialects of German were just some of the many languages spoken in the Holy Roman Empire, and not the official ones, right? I agree that democracy in EU is far from perfect but no EU institution is beyond democratic control. All answer to democratly elected politicians.