Italy cracks arms smuggling ring

ROME, Italy -- An international arms smuggling ring, which allegedly supplies the Balkans, has been smashed, Italian police have said.

Italy's anti-Mafia police said on Thursday they had cracked the ring after a three-year investigation involving police from Europe, Russia and the Ukraine.

The network, run by Russian and Ukrainian groups, had allegedly supplied thousands of tonnes of weapons to the Balkans in the early 1990s, especially the Croatian army, when the former Yugoslavia was under an arms embargo, the police added.

About 13,500 tonnes of arms were said to have been shipped through Italian waters to the Balkans by the groups.

Six people have been arrested so far for alleged arms trafficking in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Italy, police said.

Among those arrested was Russian-born oil magnate Alexander Zukhov, who has extensive petrol interests in the Ukraine.

Zukhov, who recently obtained a British passport, was arrested earlier this month as he arrived at his villa on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia for a business meeting.

The trafficking network was first uncovered by police in the northern Italian city of Turin during investigations into the activities of three companies.

Two thousand tonnes of arms said to be linked to the network was seized from a boat in the Adriatic in 1994.

A second seizure in August, 1999, which included 30,000 Kalashnikovs, hundreds of missiles and thousands of anti-tank shells from the Ukraine and Belarus, has been allegedly connected to the same network.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Italian state police

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