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CRIME

Gambling baron faces new tax crime charges

One of Sweden's most notorious gangsters, currently on trial for instigating murder, was indicted on Thursday on charges of financial crimes and illicit gambling.

Published: 14 August 2008 14:07 CEST

55-year-old Rade Kotur, often referred to in the Swedish press as “Spelkungen” (The Gambling King), is already on trial for allegedly instigating murder and attempted murder in what is set to be one Sweden’s most watched gangster trials.

According to these latest charges, the suspect’s gambling business had a turnover of at least 463 million kronor ($74 million) between January 1st 2005 and November 13th 2007.

Kotur is being charged with grievous tax crimes and false accounting in an alleged attempt to shield from Sweden’s tax authorities hundreds of millions of kronor generated from his gaming operations.

According to Erica Sommerfors, chief prosecutor at the Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau, the charges of illegal gambling against Kotor are the biggest ever in Sweden.

“As far as I know, this is the biggest case for this type of crime”, she told the TT news agency.

According to the prosecutor, the suspect is highly responsible for the financial crimes.

“There is no doubt that he is the boss pulling all the strings,” she told TT.

He is already on trial for his suspected involvement in the killing of Ratko Djokic, who was gunned down by two men in dark clothing outside a boxing club in the south Stockholm suburb of Skärholmen in May 2003.

Djokic, known as The Godfather, operated a rival gambling operation at the time. His daughter was also married to 39-year-old Milan Sevo, who police consider to be the king of the Serbian underworld in Sweden.

Sevo fled to Serbia in 2004 and authorities have been unsuccessful in their attempts to locate him for their case against Kotur.

A 35-year-old hit man, Nenad Misovic, was sentenced to life in prison for Djokic’s murder. He too is set to be tried in Gothenburg District Court for having attempted to murder another man in September 2002 on orders from Kotur.

Misovic is one of the prosecution’s key witnesses in its case against Kotur.

The victim of the murder attempt, now 44-years-old, managed to escape from the attack, which took place in the Stockholm suburb of Fisksätra, and is also scheduled to testify.

According to Dagens Nyheter, police theorize that Kotur ordered the killing because the 44-year-old had wanted to start his own gaming operation and Kotur saw the move as a threat to his own gaming empire.

Kotur was arrested in Britain in November last year, following a massive raid on his suspected illegal gambling operations, in which 400 slot machines were confiscated from 150 different locations throughout the country.

The 44-year-old victim failed to appear in court Monday morning as the prosecution presented its case because, according to the prosecutor, he wants to avoid the limelight.

Earlier, prosecutor Krister Petersson explained for the Expressen newspaper that he faces several challenges in convincing many key witnesses to testify in the case.

“People who are deeply entrenched in the gangster world refuse to testify,” he told Expressen.

“Witnesses who come forward change or withdraw their testimony.”

Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Kotur came to Sweden in the 1970s.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Kotur built up the RK Company, which operated automated poker and slot machines in pizzerias and convenience stores throughout Sweden.

According to an investigation by the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper in 2005, RK Company controlled several thousand gaming machines which made up a large part of Sweden’s estimated 5 billion kronor ($820 million) illegal gaming market.

Kotur’s trial for instigated and attempted murders is expected to last until October.

CRIME

Sweden charges Islamic State woman in landmark trial

Swedish prosecutors said they have brought genocide charges against a woman in the country's first court case over crimes committed by the Islamic State group against the Yazidi minority.

Published: 20 September 2024 07:15 CEST
Sweden charges Islamic State woman in landmark trial

A prosecutor told AFP the 52-year-old woman was accused of keeping Yazidi women and children as slaves at her home in Syria between 2014 and 2016.

She was charged with “genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes” on the grounds that her actions formed part of a broader campaign by the group (IS or Isis) against the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi minority.

The woman, who is a Swedish citizen, is in jail having already been sentenced by a Swedish court to six years in prison in 2022 for allowing her 12-year-old son to be recruited as a child soldier for Isis.

Senior prosecutor Reena Devgun told AFP that while investigating that case, authorities had received witness reports “that told us that she had kept slaves in Raqqa,” the former stronghold of the Islamic State group in northern Syria, prompting further investigations.

“If you take in Yazidis into your household when you are an Isis member or the wife of an Isis member and treat them this way, I argue that you are participating” in the broader campaign against them, Devgun said.

Devgun said the woman had kept nine people, three women and six children, in her home “as slaves”.

The women and children – who were kept in the house for between 20 days and seven months – were among other things made to perform household tasks.

Devgun said they had also been photographed, which the prosecutor argued “was done with the intention that they would be sold off”.

Evidence had mainly been gathered through witness accounts, from the victims and others that had visited the home at the time.

The crimes, which the woman denies, can carry a life sentence in Sweden.

Stockholm’s District Court said in a statement that the trial was scheduled to start on October 7th and was expected to last two months.

Around 300 Swedes or Swedish residents, a quarter of them women, joined IS in Syria and Iraq, mostly in 2013 and 2014, according to Sweden’s intelligence service Säpo.

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