Criminals pretending to be bank account holders have been sending forged documents to bank branches instructing them to transfer funds to other jurisdictions.
Commercial bank customers have been targeted in the past five months, including several charitable organisations and companies that have international business.
A garda investigation has assisted in the recovery of €160,000 taken from the account of a well-known charity in September.
It also prevented attempts to steal up to the region of €1.3m during the month of September alone.
A garda operation on 13 October led to the discovery of high-spec items of equipment used to manufacture counterfeit credit cards, and numerous business cheques and cheque books.
The cheques and cheque books appear to have been stolen from the postal system in Ireland and the UK, gardaí say.
Arrests were also made in the Drogheda and Galway searches.
A 32-year-old was before Drogheda District Court this morning.
Michael Tuzuka of Park Square, Grange Rath, Drogheda, was charged with possession of counterfeiting equipment, handling stolen property and theft and attempted theft.
Two other people arrested were released without charge and a file will be sent to the DPP.
The investigation is ongoing.

Drugs with an estimated street value of more than £3 million have been recovered in a raid, police have said.
Officers raided an industrial unit in Nuneaton Street, in the east end of Glasgow, on Thursday as part of ongoing operations to tackle serious and organised crime.
They recovered a large quantity of drugs, believed to be heroin, cannabis and other controlled drugs, worth £3.35 million.

France: Protests against pension reform over the past month resulted in canceled flights and trains and the closure of the Eiffel Tower. The government refuses to back down from increasing the retirement age from 60 to 62, and some unions declared open-ended strikes that could continue weeks. Travel to and within France may be disrupted at any time for the foreseeable future.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/15/TR891FS71V.DTL#ixzz12W5SMIvT

In an action that could put him behind bars, actor Sean Connery declined to appear in a Spanish court Friday as requested by the judge investigating an allegedly shady real estate deal involving property the actor used to own in Costa Del Sol.

In a letter, the 80-year-old actor told the judge he cannot travel to Spain because of his age and unspecified health issues. Sean Connery and Micheline Roquebrune’ fight in the Goldfinger case, the Costa del Sol development deal of Casa Malibu, has taken an unlikely turn. Sean Connery is now ignoring summons to appear, claiming he is too old to travel. Yet, as the Telegraph reports, Sean Connery was not too old in June to fly to the Edinburgh Film Festival (and even dance for the cameras during a news briefing), and he was not too old to fly to New York in April.

The couple have been ordered to appear in a case dubbed the “Goldfinger” case. There are no beautiful ladies in this case, just beautiful real estate. And while the case has sparked international news coverage, the logic of the case remains baffling to U.S. fans. Connery, himself, is equally baffled why he is being bothered over real estate dealings for a former property.

Sean Connery and his wife bought Casa Malibu in 1975 after their wedding, 11 years after Goldfinger. Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Omar Shariff and George Best were among their guests at the famed home.

Then in 1999, the couple sold the property for £5.5 million. The developer tore down their house, and built 70 flats, eventually sold for £45 million. Investigators have since claimed there were
irregularities in the reclassification of the land by the buyer. Police raided the officer of Connery’s local attorney Diaz-Basten & Truan. Multiple local officials are under investigation. Connery now lives in the Bahamas and has an NYC apartment on the Upper East Side, reports the Telegraph.

A “court worker” issues the following news statement to the Daily Mirror that “Mr Connery has informed the court in writing he won’t be coming today. He has cited health reasons and his advanced age and said he has not been able to prepare the journey in time. The court is now considering its next move. The emission of an international arrest warrant is a possibility but a remote one. The most likely scenario is that the investigating magistrate will make a formal request through a rogatory commission to question Sir Sean at his home. The logistics of this will become clearer next week. It could be that a delegation goes to the Bahamas to quiz him. The other option would be that a team based locally is tasked to interview him.”

Connery’s wife has said of the matter “We have nothing to do with this. We sold the property and that is it.” Connery and his wife have not been charged with any crime. But prosecutors claim tax evasion and money-laundering operations were at play with their lawyers and local council of



Connery and his wife, Micheline Roquebrune, had been summoned to testify on Friday. They have not been charged with a crime in the affair known in Spain as the "Goldfinger Case" in reference to Connery's turn as 007 agent James Bond.

The official said the magistrate, who earlier this year had threatened to issue an international arrest warrant against actor, will decide next week how to proceed. His options include sending Spanish officials to question Connery personally, the official said, although he said he did not know where Connery is now. The actor owns a home in the Bahamas and an apartment in New York..

The court official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with court rules.

The probe involves a beachfront mansion near Marbella that Connery used to own and nearby land which was allegedly rezoned to allow condominiums to be built. The court official declined to give details but Spanish news reports says the judge is probing possible tax evasion in the land project.

For 20 years Connery vacationed at his lavish property, Malibu, before selling it in 1998.

Marbella was once synonymous with glitz but in more recent years has been tarnished by corruption.

In 2006 the Spanish government took the unprecedented step of dissolving the entire Marbella city council amid a scandal in which city officials were accused of accepting bribes and other favors in exchange for granting building permits during a nationwide real estate boom that largely fueled Spain's economy but has since collapsed.

A total of 95 people went on trial in that case last month, although the case involving Connery and others is separate.

TWO IRISH CITIZENS are among a group of people arrested by Spanish police in Ibiza in a major drugs operation.
The operation is being jointly run by Spanish and British police, and has resulted in the discovery of around 38,000 ecstasy tablets and 4kg of cocaine, as well as other drugs.
Police also recovered around €56,000.
Fourteen men and 11 women have been arrested, including two Irish and 20 British people.
The nationalities of the other people arrested include Spain, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The drug racket is believed to have been run from Britain, and local police are saying that they have successfully broken the most powerful drugs ring on the island.
The chief of the European operations of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said that “every level of a gang that was responsible for supplying and distributing a vast quantity of drugs to Ibiza” has been taken out by the arrests.
Police also said that students had been acting as mules for the gang by bringing drugs to the island packed in their suitcases. Nightclub employees are believed to be among those arrested.

Criminals pretending to be bank account holders have been sending forged documents to bank branches instructing them to transfer funds to other jurisdictions.
Commercial bank customers have been targeted in the past five months, including several charitable organisations and companies that have international business.
A garda investigation has assisted in the recovery of €160,000 taken from the account of a well-known charity in September.
It also prevented attempts to steal up to the region of €1.3m during the month of September alone.
A garda operation on 13 October led to the discovery of high-spec items of equipment used to manufacture counterfeit credit cards, and numerous business cheques and cheque books.
The cheques and cheque books appear to have been stolen from the postal system in Ireland and the UK, gardaí say.
Arrests were also made in the Drogheda and Galway searches.
A 32-year-old was before Drogheda District Court this morning.
Michael Tuzuka of Park Square, Grange Rath, Drogheda, was charged with possession of counterfeiting equipment, handling stolen property and theft and attempted theft.
Two other people arrested were released without charge and a file will be sent to the DPP.
The investigation is ongoing.

Two fugitive chiefs of criminal gangs are suspected of paying more than 200,000 euros (280,000 dollars) to football fans whose violent riots forced the cancellation of Serbia's Euro 2012 qualifying match, a Serbian newspaper reported on Saturday.
"More than 200,000 euros had been paid to more than 60 hooligans for the organisation, trip, getting equipment and rioting due to which the match in Genoa was not played," the pro-government Politika daily said, quoting a source close to the investigation.
According to the newspaper, police are following a lead that the riots were ordered by two chiefs of separate criminal gangs -- a cocaine dealer also suspected for money laundering and one believed to head a criminal organisation linked with a number of murders, robberies and violent behaviour.
It was likely that the two, "despite being in a financial dispute with each other, financed the riots because both have interest in creating chaos in the state" of Serbia, the unnamed source told Politika.
Police have also been following a lead that people dissatisfied with the Football Federation of Serbia had been behind the riots, but the source said this was being treated as less likely.
The match in Genoa was aborted on Tuesday just six minutes into play due to Serbian fans throwing flares onto the pitch and at rival Italy supporters.
Police in Italy made 17 arrests and 16 people were hospitalised after the clashes in Genoa. The injured included two policemen.
Serbian police have detained 35 football fans on their way back from Genoa in northern Italy.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic promised a thorough police probe into the incidents.
Serbia has stepped up the fight against organised crime in a bid to meet conditions for membership in the European Union.

Venezuela's Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz said that the Attorney General Office requested the 19th Control Court of the Caracas Metropolitan Area (AMC) the initiation of proceedings to extradite Army Major General Néstor González González.

She said that it is of public knowledge that Gen. González González will be in Spain on November 15.

Gen. González González is being investigated in connection with the alleged crime of civil rebellion, following the events of April 2002.

Ortega Díaz said that as Gen. González González will be in Spain on November 15, "we, as the Venezuelan institution guarantor of legality, and pursuant to the extradition treaty between the two countries, request (Spain) to extradite the aforementioned citizen, who is wanted in Venezuela."