Prague, Aug 15 (CTK) – Foreigners make up roughly 17 percent of the total number of prosecuted persons in Prague, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) quotes police spokeswoman Andrea Zoulova as saying yesterday.
Nationally, foreigners account for about 7 percent of all prosecuted persons, Zoulova said.
The Czech capital attracts tourists on the one hand, but foreign gangsters, losers and drunkards on the other, too, MfD writes.
This is largely due to Prague’s exceptional position as a commercial centre and transport intersection, it adds.
“In 2015, the importance of Balkans group increased. Most of them had strong links abroad, while in some cases, they made an organic part of international or multinational groupings,” an Interior Ministry report, to be discussed by the government soon, said.
Groups from the Asian and Russian environment are the most important ones, it added.
Detectives may spend many years to unravel the complicated commercial and personal relationships within foreign communities and subsequent settling of accounts, MfD writes.
It took eight years to the police to finish the case of a contract killing of a man from Kosovo, it adds.
His elimination was ordered by his rival. “When I see him, I have an eye sore. He must die by the end of the year,” the man who commissioned the murder said.
Foreigners often commit burglaries in Prague, MfD writes.
Three years ago, two Russians broke into a jewellery store in the fashionable Parizska Street. They looted Swiss watches for 1.6 million crowns, it adds.
One of the thieves was found in Finland, another in Estonia, MfD writes.
“Russian and Ukrainian groups are implicated in violent crime and organised prostitution,” a Prague detective, who requested anonymity, has told the paper.
“Romanian and Bulgarian groups are involved in skimming and some of them are pickpockets,” he added.
Recently, the High Court in Prague concluded the case of a Bulgarian named Tsvetan Tsvatanov. For complicity in fraud, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, MfD writes.
Last year, the Prague police investigated a total of 12,710 persons. Of the number, Praguers accounted for less than one half, while people from outside Prague for one-third. The rest of the crimes was committed by foreigners, MfD writes.
($1 = 24.211 crowns)
