ZAGREB: Croatia arrested 17 people, including 10 customs officers, suspected of being part of a bribe scheme worth at least ¤1m ($1.3m), the anti-graft bureau said yesterday.
They were arrested in the northern port of Rijeka on Tuesday, suspected of “abuse of power, giving and receiving bribes and forging official documents within a criminal enterprise,” the USKOK bureau said in a statement.
Those arrested, including a Chinese national, are suspected of illegally reducing customs duties on goods imported from China and Italy and forging documents with false quantities and prices. Besides customs officials, the arrested included heads of shipping companies and local import firms.
Belgium nabs 31 over $50m heist
BRUSSELS: Police have arrested 31 people in Belgium, France and Switzerland over the heist of $50m in diamonds from Brussels airport in February, Belgian prosecutors said yesterday.
One suspect was arrested in France and eight in Switzerland on Tuesday, while 24 were rounded up after a raid near Brussels early yesterday, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor said. As well as a large amount of diamonds, police recovered cash and luxury cars during the operation in Belgium. The February 18 robbery at Zaventem airport was at the time described as “one of the biggest” ever by the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, the global dealers’ syndicate. Agencies
