BBC NEWS | Programmes | Crossing Continents | Croatia cursed by crime and corruption - 0 views
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The murders of Ivo Pukanic and Ivana Hodak, together with a spate of attacks on journalists and businessmen, have confirmed a belief in the minds of many Croats that their country is in the grip of powerful mafia whose roots lie in the international embargo against Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
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Robbed of trade revenue and legitimate supplies of weapons, the constituent republics, including Croatia, turned to smuggling. Those criminals of yesteryear became the powerful businessmen of today.
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In Vukovar I met respected journalist Goran Flauder, who has written investigative articles about some these men - and been physically attacked six times. "We like to say that where Italy is a state with a mafia, Croatia is a mafia with a state," he says.
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