During the recent period, the Slovenian police have successfully investigated a series of criminal offences. At the press conference, we presented details of the concluded crime investigation of the murder in the area of Maribor and summed up the results of the last comphrehensive investigations of serious crime, when the police uncovered a number of organised criminal association.
On the photo: Aleksander Jevšek, Director of Criminal Police Directorate at GPD, and Marjan Fank, Head of the Criminal Police Section at Maribor PD, and police public relations officer for criminal matters Drago Menegalija, and public relations officer - relations with the press at the Maribor PD Bartolo Lampret
Procedure and results of the murder investigation in the case of a woman stabbed by an unknown perpetrator on 19 May in Maribor
According to Marjan Fank, Head of of the Criminal Police Section at the Maribor PD, the operation and communication centre of the Maribor PD was, at 21:48 on 19 May 2009, informed that an unknown perpetrator had stabbed a woman in front of the garages by the block of flats on Župančičeva ulica 11 in Maribor and had fled the scene immediately after the act.
Marjan Fank, Head of the Criminal Police Section at the Maribor Police Directorate
In addition to police officers, an ambulance was sent to the scene of the crime, however, because of the inflicted stab wound, the victim had died at the scene of the crime. The police officers found that the 44-year-old female victim was in the vicinity of the garages by the block of flats in the company of three more persons who were talking. During the conversation, the perpetrator approached the female victim from behind and stabbed her in the back without any provocation, and then ran away.
In an intensive criminal investigation, the police carried out a large number of interviewing talks and investigated several persons. They established reasonable grounds for suspicion that the crime had been committed by a 59-year-old man from Maribor, living in the vicinity of the crime and according to the available data, mentally ill, who had already been apprehended for committing a crime of this type. They also found that the perpetrator had run away immediately after the crime into the flat where he lived and is still there today. Since he did not respond to ringing, knocking on the door and calling, and there was a risk that the apprehension would lead to armed resistance and severe injuries, police officers of the Special Unit of the GPD were involved; they apprehended the suspect at 18:53 on the same day. The suspect resisted arrest and attacked a police officer with a knife. After searching the house, the police handed over the suspect to health professionals.
A criminal complaint on the grounds of reasonable suspicion of having committed the crime of murder, punishable by at least 15 years of imprisonment, was filed against the suspect with the Maribor District Public Prosecutor?s Office.
Slovenian police successfully investigated a series of serious crimes
Director of the Criminal Police Directorate at the Ljubljana GPD, Aleksander Jevšek used the occasion to sum up the good results of the last comprehensive investigations of serious types of crime, as the police have uncovered a good many of organised criminal associations.
Aleksander Jevšek, Director of the Criminal Police Directorate at the Ljubljana GPD
As Jevšek stated at the press conference, in the field of organised crime, the Slovenian criminal police has carried out in the last months - in cooperation with the uniformed police and merely acting upon their own observations - several comprehensive, in most cases internationally coordinated investigations.
These investigations concerned abuse of illegal drugs, illegal manufacture of and trafficking in arms and explosives, violence, and illegal crossing of the state territory. These cases involved operational measures against members of well organised criminal associations, who committed various criminal offences in the wider area of Slovenia and also abroad, particularly in the EU member states.
He emphasised that in the successfully concluded investigation, the police have uncovered more than 700 criminal acts, while 69 persons were, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, brought before the investigating judge for interrogation.
In these crime investigation operations, police officers seized several illicit substances and articles, as well as explosives and arms.
The results attained in this year by Slovenian police in combating organised crime are also very encouraging.
In the first four months of this year, Slovenian police dealt with 1,097 criminal offences in the field of illicit drugs abuse, which is 48 percent more than last year; in the field of illegal manufacture and trafficking in arms and explosives, 64 criminal offences were investigated.
In the field of economic crime, criminal police officers uncovered 4 % more economic criminal offences; however, only in four months, these criminal offences caused material damage in the amount of 132 million euro.
The number of criminal offences of abuse of authority or of trust in carrying out economic operations, tax evasion and money laundering is on the increase in 2009.
In the last months, the Slovenian police have also successfully concluded two criminal investigations of corruption criminal offences: In the first case, they filed a complaint against 3 suspects for 6 criminal offences, and in the second case they filed a complaint against 2 persons on the ground of reasonable suspicion of having committed 15 corruption crimes. Slovenian police thus filed criminal complaints for already 24 corruption offences, which is more than in the whole last year, and for additional 10 criminal offences with elements of corruption.
After establishing an anonymous E-report of corruption offences, the police received in this way 86 reports of suspected corruption from 9 April to 21 May this year. Over the telephone number 080-1200 the police received seven anonymous reports during the same time.
Together against corruption! - Anonymous cormplaints of corruption offences possible from now on
Finally Jevšek also mentioned that the police have successfully investigated a series of robberies at banks on the Coast and several serious burglaries and robberies all over Slovenia, and have also solved the last case of a hand grenade thrown at the Kranj police directorate.