The self-proclaimed Republic of Transnistria is perhaps the most mysterious and forbidding corner of Europe. It is recognised by no-one - little wonder then that when it celebrated 10 years of independence last year, no international guests attended the party.
That was of little concern to Transnistria's President Igor Smirnov. His army is huge and he uses a massive internal security service to control Transnistria's 700,000 residents. But of greater concern to the West are allegations that the regime here is producing and trafficking weapons, among them, so-called dirty bombs.
MARK GALEOTTI, JANES DEFENCE WEEKLY: Here we have weapons which, if they were to end up in the hands of terrorists, could do tremendous harm, scattering large areas of a city centre with radioactive waste. Now, the very fact that these weapons are in the hands of a regime, that, to be blunt, we cannot trust, we cannot trust and we cannot predict what they're going to do, automatically created a problem for the outside world.
Dr Mark Galeotti is an expert on Russian organised crime and writes for 'Jane's Defence Weekly'. He also advises British intelligence on the growing criminal threat to Europe from the East.
MARK GALEOTTI: You actually have Transnistria as this festering criminal sore, which is infecting all its neighbouring countries. We know that Russian and Ukrainian criminals have safe havens there. We also know the Transnistrian gangs have moved into neighbouring Moldova, and through Moldova into Romania, which in turn is a back door into the European Union.
Transnistria used to be part of the eastern half of Moldova. After World War II, Moldova was swallowed by the Soviet Union and when that collapsed in 1991, it was quick to declare independence. But from the start, the country was split into two with Russians in the eastern half deciding they wanted no part of an independent Moldova. The self-styled Republic of Transnistria was born.
When Transnistria broke away, military forces from both sides poured into the conflict zone. Dug into their positions, what followed was a Sarajevo-style sniper war, which cost almost 2,000 live before hostilities ceased in mid '92. Now in the West, Moldova is trying hard to show off its newly gained sophistication and demonstrate its readiness to join the European community. But just one hour's drive east, life remains as it was during the Cold War days of the Soviet empire with the Russians still in charge.
I've decided to travel to Transnistria to investigate the claims of arms trafficking and organised crime. At the border zone, there's a series of Moldovan checkpoints before you reach Transnistria. There's a European travel ban on Transnistria's leaders, so European passport holders are usually turned back. But an Australian was considered innocuous enough. Soon, I was in Transnistria's capital Tiraspol.
Travelling here really is like stepping through a time warp into the glory days of the Soviet Union. Communist icons like Lenin and the hammer and sickle are everywhere to be seen and huge banners encourage its citizens to be proud of their Republic's achievements. But Western police believe that Transnistria is a lawless place where even the authorities participate in organised crime.
DR PAOLO SARTORI, INTERPOL LIAISON OFFICER ROMANIA: In Transnistria they can operate without problems with the authorities because the leadership there is involved in their business.
REPORTER: The leadership is corrupt?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Corrupt is the minimum, is involved.
Paolo Sartori is an Italian Interpol liaison officer based in Romania's capital Bucharest. He's spent years studying crime networks in the Balkans and says Transnistria deserves its shady reputation.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: We are worried, even the other Western countries are worried. You know that organised crime is widespread all over the world, not only in Transnistria, but where you can work with the local authorities and you can have international relationships in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. At least you know which is the problem, how huge is it, and what you can do. But if there is a black hole where you cannot do anything and where the criminal organisation and even the leadership of the country is a problem more and more and more big.
The West is impotent because Transnistria has the might of Russia on its side. Not far from Transnistria's capital, Russian troops still guard their Soviet era stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, kept here as a deterrent to NATO. Transnistria maintains a cosy relationship with Russia and its 14th army, which helps explain why the regime has managed to survive so long.
As you drive around the capital Tiraspol you soon notice that alongside the Soviet icons the five-pronged Sheriff emblem, is so proudly displayed. It may have echoes of the wild west but this is Transnistria's biggest commercial enterprise - running dozens of virtual monopolies on everything from petrol stations to supermarkets. Sheriff even owns the local football team, along with the most breathtaking site in Tiraspol - the Sheriff football complex.
PETER LYALYUK, SHERIFF STADIUM DIRECTOR (Translation): In sport there is no politics. All this has been built for the people, the fans, so they can enjoy the events and be happy. We're not interested in politics.
At the Sheriff Stadium, director Peter Lyalyuk is happy to show me around. Built to international standards, there are actually two stadiums, four training fields with imported turf, an athletics track, an international hotel and an elite boarding school to train future football champions. Estimates of its cost range from $250 million to $300 million, that's about five to six times Transnistria's official annual revenue.
REPORTER (Translation): How much does it all cost?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): I don't know, because we're still building it.
REPORTER (Translation): So far?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): I couldn't say. The accounts department deals with that.
But Moldovan and Western police and Customs officials are convinced that the Sheriff company is involved in the smuggling of contraband. Transnistria has an official customs service on its border with Ukraine, which is run by one of President Smirnov's sons Vladimir. Experts say corrupt Ukrainian officials are allowing unchecked consignments through the Black Sea port of Ilyichevsk and into Transnistria.
COLONEL ION LEAHU, KGB (Translation): From the port they go to Tiraspol. No-one stops them. No customs, nothing... they get to Tiraspol where... the cargo is divided, let's say, and the trucks move on to other places.
Colonel Ion Leahu has worked in Moldova's interior ministry all his life, in Soviet times with the local KGB and now with Moldova's intelligence agency, advising on organised crime and terrorism.
COLONEL ION LEAHU, (Translation): On the Ukrainian border, about once a year, all the border guards were replaced because they were assisting Sheriff and other organisations to smuggle contraband to Ukraine where it would be lost.
Back at the stadium, Peter resents any suggestion that the Sheriff complex was built with black money.
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): No, it's not true.
REPORTER (Translation): It isn't true?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): No, it isn't. The company could have invested the money abroad where no one would know about it. But instead they invested this money in developing football in the Republic to help it reach an international level. They preferred to create opportunities for children and young people.
In the centre of Tiraspol is the city's restored cathedral with its golden domes. This too was a gift from the Sheriff company. However, it's shunned by some churchgoers as a place tainted with dirty money. But the Sheriff company is eager to promote itself as Transnistria's wholesome benefactor.
NIKOLAI LIZUNOV, DIRECTOR OF SHERIFF TV STATION (Translation): Like any company that's moving forward which has serious money and does serious business, it has its opponents. But these people only talk while the Sheriff company works. There's an Eastern proverb, "The dog may bark but the caravan moves on." This is an example.
Nikolai Lizunov is director of the Sheriff TV station and he wanted to tell me why the description of Transnistria as a criminal state was unwarranted.
NIKOLAI LIZUNOV (Translation): Transnistria has been accused of contraband for 13 years. In all that time not one bullet shell has been found on the border. If even one incident of contraband was found, if even one incident of arms dealing was proven, the world would know instantly from the Moldovan mass media.
In fact, last year, in a story later picked up by the 'Washington Post', the Moldovan media reported that Tiraspol had the material to build dirty bombs. Left over from Soviet times, 38 Alazan rockets, their tips filled with a radioactive isotope and providing the same result as a small dirty bomb are being secretly kept by the Transnistrian regime.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): Initially they tried dismantling them but there were no qualified experts to do this and they feared there was a risk of contamination, so instead the rockets were hidden. I know where they're hidden but for now I won't tell. Except that it's on Transnistrian territory. I believe if there was a genuine interest in these rockets and if a buyer was found, they'd sell them.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: If, let's say, the price was right, if it looked as if they could sell them without it immediately being tracked back to Transnistria, I certainly couldn't guarantee that the criminals who are really in the heart of the Transnistrian government would not be prepared to sell them. So yeah, potentially it's a source of vast different arrays of weapons of mass destruction.
I asked my minders for a tour of Transnistria's largest industrial plant, the Electromash factory, which it is said is used to manufacture conventional weapons. To my surprise, my request was granted.
In days gone by, this factory was a showpiece of Soviet engineering and ingenuity and it remains highly productive. On the factory floor, women construct huge generators used for Siberian oil and gas pipelines, whilst overhead they also have the delicate task of loading and shifting with the mechanised swinging cranes.
Over several hours, I was shown through at least a third of the factory, which the foreman told me also produced washing machines and a range of industrial equipment. From the perspective of my short tour, it seemed that everything in this factory was above board.
But according to Western intelligence officials, factories like Electromash are far more sinister than they appear. They claim that the production of washing machines and generators is simply the front for a far more lucrative trade - the manufacture of weapons from pistols to hand-held missile systems, which are shipped to the world's hotspots at an alarming rate.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL, ORGANISATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE: The industries now lying in Transnistria, that are still operating there during Soviet times produced lots of armaments for the Soviet military. We know that it's high quality production and we know that this production continues.
Based in Moldova, Ambassador William Hill represents the OSCE, or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He says Transnistria's factories produce an incredible array of weaponry.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL: We know, for example, that a whole range of conventional arms are produced there - Makarov pistols, Kalashnikov rifles, Grad rocket launcher systems and rockets, components for surface-to-air missiles, components for submarines, large - medium size and large scale mortars, other other parts for heavy military equipment. This is just some of the stuff that's produced there.
And not only is Transnistria producing weapons, but according to Interpol, it's selling them as well.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: They sell weapons all over the world, mainly illegal. And they don't care - the owner, the customer with whom they work, they sell weapons to the Chechen terrorists, to the criminal organisations, to the other extremist groups who operate in the international terrorism and so on and so on.
Back in Tiraspol I'm granted an interview with Transnistria's deputy industries minister Yury Ganin. He acknowledges that weapons were produced in Tiraspol in the past but not any longer.
YURY GANIN, DEPUTY INDUSTRIES MINISTER (Translation): Of course during the 1992 war our engineers and workers were involved in setting up production to supply the armed forces. Of course, during the war... our industries assisted our army's campaign. But that was only during that period. Our army is now well supplied, so production has long been suspended. We have enough for our armed forces.
Transnistria's presidential bodyguards simulate an assassination attempt as young recruits look on. Transnistria has a number of security services and a court system, but investigating Transnistria's links to organised crime and the arms trade can be lethal.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): Transnistria's first prosecutor-general, Boris Luchik, tried to build a case, but he was the victim of an assassination attempt, a bomb blast which killed his wife and very seriously injured him. Since then, not one prosecutor or law enforcement agency in Transnistria or Moldova has dealt with this issue.
According to Colonel Leahu Transnistria's current criminal structure can be traced back to the regime's state security service. He says that about 10 years ago Transnistria's security service took over control of organised crime.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): They managed to completely eliminate every serious, influential organised crime boss. But the vacuum had to be filled. The organisations still remained and someone had to be the boss.
The person in charge was this man - Vladimir Antufeyev, Transnistria's minister of internal security.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): When he became the boss, the head of internal security he came up with the plan I told you about, to eliminate 100 people who posed a threat so that the regime could be established. This man eliminated anyone who stood in his way and today he's the most powerful functionary in Transnistria.
Anyufeyev first came to the attention of international police when the Baltic state of Latvia declared independence in 1991. He was a commander of an elite Soviet police division which stormed the Latvian Interior Ministry, killing five people.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: You have to know that the minister of the national security of Transnistria has an international warrant. He's wanted by Interpol for homicide and other crimes in the former Soviet Union.
Vladimir Antyufeyev declined Dateline's request for an interview, but I did have an opportunity to speak to President Igor Smirnov. As a Russian passport holder, Transnistria's leader was casting his vote in Russia's parliamentary elections. I asked him to respond to the allegations that Transnistria's government was involved in organised crime and arms trafficking.
PRESIDENT IGOR SMIRNOV (Translation): I don't need to defend what is happening here. Let people come here, live here and see for themselves that here it is the society that rules the state.
REPORTER: To what extent does Smirnov - does his name connect to the criminal activities?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Personally we don't know, personally, but in Transnistria nothing can be done without the approval of the leadership and so it's easy to realise that at least he knows what happens over there.
REPORTER: So what you're saying is it's impossible that he doesn't know what's going on?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
For many Transnistrians Russia remains the motherland, so Russian election day is a big deal. Tiraspol has so many Russian passport holders that it even has a designated representative in the Russian parliament.
Late last year, despite the West's concern about President Smirnov's regime, Moscow suggested that Moldova and Transnistria should be reunited in an equal federation. It caused a storm of protest in neighbouring Moldova.
CROWD (Translation): Down with the communitists!
In Moldova's capital, Chisinau, 80,000 people gathered in the city square demanding that their government reject the Russian plan and resign. These people want no part of what they see as a criminal regime, and suspicious of their former masters, they want the Russian army to get out of the region.
The United States and Europe also rejected the Moscow plan, suggesting instead that international peacekeepers be sent into Transnistria ahead of any future settlement. There's also pressure for weapons inspections, but Smirnov's regime is only offering controlled one-off visits to its factories.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL: How do you know when you've seen enough? I mean, the invitation to inspect a few factories at selected times is not something that was satisfactory to inspectors or to the UN in Iraq, and it's a problem that we've not been able to resolve here.
At President Igor Smirnov's most recent inauguration as Transnistria's leader, the Kremlin-style fanfare was proudly televised in defiance of mounting criticism from the West. In Tiraspol, the leadership continues to ignore the outside world. But in a world increasingly intolerant of rogue states with sinister reputations, Transnistria's future will become a more urgent priority.
MARK GALEOTTI: It was again, I think, a product of the pre 9/11 era that we hadn't really thought of just how dangerous these weapons systems would be in the hands of terrorists. It's only, I think, in the modern security environment that we actually start thinking not just will governments use these weapons, but what happens if and when these weapons end up in the hands of extremists or terrorists, or criminals or blackmailers and so forth. That is unfortunately the nature of the brave new world in which we live. So we've known about it but I think we've never really put it in the right kind of context until more recently.
That was of little concern to Transnistria's President Igor Smirnov. His army is huge and he uses a massive internal security service to control Transnistria's 700,000 residents. But of greater concern to the West are allegations that the regime here is producing and trafficking weapons, among them, so-called dirty bombs.
MARK GALEOTTI, JANES DEFENCE WEEKLY: Here we have weapons which, if they were to end up in the hands of terrorists, could do tremendous harm, scattering large areas of a city centre with radioactive waste. Now, the very fact that these weapons are in the hands of a regime, that, to be blunt, we cannot trust, we cannot trust and we cannot predict what they're going to do, automatically created a problem for the outside world.
Dr Mark Galeotti is an expert on Russian organised crime and writes for 'Jane's Defence Weekly'. He also advises British intelligence on the growing criminal threat to Europe from the East.
MARK GALEOTTI: You actually have Transnistria as this festering criminal sore, which is infecting all its neighbouring countries. We know that Russian and Ukrainian criminals have safe havens there. We also know the Transnistrian gangs have moved into neighbouring Moldova, and through Moldova into Romania, which in turn is a back door into the European Union.
Transnistria used to be part of the eastern half of Moldova. After World War II, Moldova was swallowed by the Soviet Union and when that collapsed in 1991, it was quick to declare independence. But from the start, the country was split into two with Russians in the eastern half deciding they wanted no part of an independent Moldova. The self-styled Republic of Transnistria was born.
When Transnistria broke away, military forces from both sides poured into the conflict zone. Dug into their positions, what followed was a Sarajevo-style sniper war, which cost almost 2,000 live before hostilities ceased in mid '92. Now in the West, Moldova is trying hard to show off its newly gained sophistication and demonstrate its readiness to join the European community. But just one hour's drive east, life remains as it was during the Cold War days of the Soviet empire with the Russians still in charge.
I've decided to travel to Transnistria to investigate the claims of arms trafficking and organised crime. At the border zone, there's a series of Moldovan checkpoints before you reach Transnistria. There's a European travel ban on Transnistria's leaders, so European passport holders are usually turned back. But an Australian was considered innocuous enough. Soon, I was in Transnistria's capital Tiraspol.
Travelling here really is like stepping through a time warp into the glory days of the Soviet Union. Communist icons like Lenin and the hammer and sickle are everywhere to be seen and huge banners encourage its citizens to be proud of their Republic's achievements. But Western police believe that Transnistria is a lawless place where even the authorities participate in organised crime.
DR PAOLO SARTORI, INTERPOL LIAISON OFFICER ROMANIA: In Transnistria they can operate without problems with the authorities because the leadership there is involved in their business.
REPORTER: The leadership is corrupt?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Corrupt is the minimum, is involved.
Paolo Sartori is an Italian Interpol liaison officer based in Romania's capital Bucharest. He's spent years studying crime networks in the Balkans and says Transnistria deserves its shady reputation.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: We are worried, even the other Western countries are worried. You know that organised crime is widespread all over the world, not only in Transnistria, but where you can work with the local authorities and you can have international relationships in the fight against organised crime and terrorism. At least you know which is the problem, how huge is it, and what you can do. But if there is a black hole where you cannot do anything and where the criminal organisation and even the leadership of the country is a problem more and more and more big.
The West is impotent because Transnistria has the might of Russia on its side. Not far from Transnistria's capital, Russian troops still guard their Soviet era stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, kept here as a deterrent to NATO. Transnistria maintains a cosy relationship with Russia and its 14th army, which helps explain why the regime has managed to survive so long.
As you drive around the capital Tiraspol you soon notice that alongside the Soviet icons the five-pronged Sheriff emblem, is so proudly displayed. It may have echoes of the wild west but this is Transnistria's biggest commercial enterprise - running dozens of virtual monopolies on everything from petrol stations to supermarkets. Sheriff even owns the local football team, along with the most breathtaking site in Tiraspol - the Sheriff football complex.
PETER LYALYUK, SHERIFF STADIUM DIRECTOR (Translation): In sport there is no politics. All this has been built for the people, the fans, so they can enjoy the events and be happy. We're not interested in politics.
At the Sheriff Stadium, director Peter Lyalyuk is happy to show me around. Built to international standards, there are actually two stadiums, four training fields with imported turf, an athletics track, an international hotel and an elite boarding school to train future football champions. Estimates of its cost range from $250 million to $300 million, that's about five to six times Transnistria's official annual revenue.
REPORTER (Translation): How much does it all cost?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): I don't know, because we're still building it.
REPORTER (Translation): So far?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): I couldn't say. The accounts department deals with that.
But Moldovan and Western police and Customs officials are convinced that the Sheriff company is involved in the smuggling of contraband. Transnistria has an official customs service on its border with Ukraine, which is run by one of President Smirnov's sons Vladimir. Experts say corrupt Ukrainian officials are allowing unchecked consignments through the Black Sea port of Ilyichevsk and into Transnistria.
COLONEL ION LEAHU, KGB (Translation): From the port they go to Tiraspol. No-one stops them. No customs, nothing... they get to Tiraspol where... the cargo is divided, let's say, and the trucks move on to other places.
Colonel Ion Leahu has worked in Moldova's interior ministry all his life, in Soviet times with the local KGB and now with Moldova's intelligence agency, advising on organised crime and terrorism.
COLONEL ION LEAHU, (Translation): On the Ukrainian border, about once a year, all the border guards were replaced because they were assisting Sheriff and other organisations to smuggle contraband to Ukraine where it would be lost.
Back at the stadium, Peter resents any suggestion that the Sheriff complex was built with black money.
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): No, it's not true.
REPORTER (Translation): It isn't true?
PETER LYALYUK (Translation): No, it isn't. The company could have invested the money abroad where no one would know about it. But instead they invested this money in developing football in the Republic to help it reach an international level. They preferred to create opportunities for children and young people.
In the centre of Tiraspol is the city's restored cathedral with its golden domes. This too was a gift from the Sheriff company. However, it's shunned by some churchgoers as a place tainted with dirty money. But the Sheriff company is eager to promote itself as Transnistria's wholesome benefactor.
NIKOLAI LIZUNOV, DIRECTOR OF SHERIFF TV STATION (Translation): Like any company that's moving forward which has serious money and does serious business, it has its opponents. But these people only talk while the Sheriff company works. There's an Eastern proverb, "The dog may bark but the caravan moves on." This is an example.
Nikolai Lizunov is director of the Sheriff TV station and he wanted to tell me why the description of Transnistria as a criminal state was unwarranted.
NIKOLAI LIZUNOV (Translation): Transnistria has been accused of contraband for 13 years. In all that time not one bullet shell has been found on the border. If even one incident of contraband was found, if even one incident of arms dealing was proven, the world would know instantly from the Moldovan mass media.
In fact, last year, in a story later picked up by the 'Washington Post', the Moldovan media reported that Tiraspol had the material to build dirty bombs. Left over from Soviet times, 38 Alazan rockets, their tips filled with a radioactive isotope and providing the same result as a small dirty bomb are being secretly kept by the Transnistrian regime.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): Initially they tried dismantling them but there were no qualified experts to do this and they feared there was a risk of contamination, so instead the rockets were hidden. I know where they're hidden but for now I won't tell. Except that it's on Transnistrian territory. I believe if there was a genuine interest in these rockets and if a buyer was found, they'd sell them.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: If, let's say, the price was right, if it looked as if they could sell them without it immediately being tracked back to Transnistria, I certainly couldn't guarantee that the criminals who are really in the heart of the Transnistrian government would not be prepared to sell them. So yeah, potentially it's a source of vast different arrays of weapons of mass destruction.
I asked my minders for a tour of Transnistria's largest industrial plant, the Electromash factory, which it is said is used to manufacture conventional weapons. To my surprise, my request was granted.
In days gone by, this factory was a showpiece of Soviet engineering and ingenuity and it remains highly productive. On the factory floor, women construct huge generators used for Siberian oil and gas pipelines, whilst overhead they also have the delicate task of loading and shifting with the mechanised swinging cranes.
Over several hours, I was shown through at least a third of the factory, which the foreman told me also produced washing machines and a range of industrial equipment. From the perspective of my short tour, it seemed that everything in this factory was above board.
But according to Western intelligence officials, factories like Electromash are far more sinister than they appear. They claim that the production of washing machines and generators is simply the front for a far more lucrative trade - the manufacture of weapons from pistols to hand-held missile systems, which are shipped to the world's hotspots at an alarming rate.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL, ORGANISATION FOR SECURITY AND COOPERATION IN EUROPE: The industries now lying in Transnistria, that are still operating there during Soviet times produced lots of armaments for the Soviet military. We know that it's high quality production and we know that this production continues.
Based in Moldova, Ambassador William Hill represents the OSCE, or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He says Transnistria's factories produce an incredible array of weaponry.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL: We know, for example, that a whole range of conventional arms are produced there - Makarov pistols, Kalashnikov rifles, Grad rocket launcher systems and rockets, components for surface-to-air missiles, components for submarines, large - medium size and large scale mortars, other other parts for heavy military equipment. This is just some of the stuff that's produced there.
And not only is Transnistria producing weapons, but according to Interpol, it's selling them as well.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: They sell weapons all over the world, mainly illegal. And they don't care - the owner, the customer with whom they work, they sell weapons to the Chechen terrorists, to the criminal organisations, to the other extremist groups who operate in the international terrorism and so on and so on.
Back in Tiraspol I'm granted an interview with Transnistria's deputy industries minister Yury Ganin. He acknowledges that weapons were produced in Tiraspol in the past but not any longer.
YURY GANIN, DEPUTY INDUSTRIES MINISTER (Translation): Of course during the 1992 war our engineers and workers were involved in setting up production to supply the armed forces. Of course, during the war... our industries assisted our army's campaign. But that was only during that period. Our army is now well supplied, so production has long been suspended. We have enough for our armed forces.
Transnistria's presidential bodyguards simulate an assassination attempt as young recruits look on. Transnistria has a number of security services and a court system, but investigating Transnistria's links to organised crime and the arms trade can be lethal.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): Transnistria's first prosecutor-general, Boris Luchik, tried to build a case, but he was the victim of an assassination attempt, a bomb blast which killed his wife and very seriously injured him. Since then, not one prosecutor or law enforcement agency in Transnistria or Moldova has dealt with this issue.
According to Colonel Leahu Transnistria's current criminal structure can be traced back to the regime's state security service. He says that about 10 years ago Transnistria's security service took over control of organised crime.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): They managed to completely eliminate every serious, influential organised crime boss. But the vacuum had to be filled. The organisations still remained and someone had to be the boss.
The person in charge was this man - Vladimir Antufeyev, Transnistria's minister of internal security.
COLONEL ION LEAHU (Translation): When he became the boss, the head of internal security he came up with the plan I told you about, to eliminate 100 people who posed a threat so that the regime could be established. This man eliminated anyone who stood in his way and today he's the most powerful functionary in Transnistria.
Anyufeyev first came to the attention of international police when the Baltic state of Latvia declared independence in 1991. He was a commander of an elite Soviet police division which stormed the Latvian Interior Ministry, killing five people.
DR PAOLO SARTORI: You have to know that the minister of the national security of Transnistria has an international warrant. He's wanted by Interpol for homicide and other crimes in the former Soviet Union.
Vladimir Antyufeyev declined Dateline's request for an interview, but I did have an opportunity to speak to President Igor Smirnov. As a Russian passport holder, Transnistria's leader was casting his vote in Russia's parliamentary elections. I asked him to respond to the allegations that Transnistria's government was involved in organised crime and arms trafficking.
PRESIDENT IGOR SMIRNOV (Translation): I don't need to defend what is happening here. Let people come here, live here and see for themselves that here it is the society that rules the state.
REPORTER: To what extent does Smirnov - does his name connect to the criminal activities?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Personally we don't know, personally, but in Transnistria nothing can be done without the approval of the leadership and so it's easy to realise that at least he knows what happens over there.
REPORTER: So what you're saying is it's impossible that he doesn't know what's going on?
DR PAOLO SARTORI: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
For many Transnistrians Russia remains the motherland, so Russian election day is a big deal. Tiraspol has so many Russian passport holders that it even has a designated representative in the Russian parliament.
Late last year, despite the West's concern about President Smirnov's regime, Moscow suggested that Moldova and Transnistria should be reunited in an equal federation. It caused a storm of protest in neighbouring Moldova.
CROWD (Translation): Down with the communitists!
In Moldova's capital, Chisinau, 80,000 people gathered in the city square demanding that their government reject the Russian plan and resign. These people want no part of what they see as a criminal regime, and suspicious of their former masters, they want the Russian army to get out of the region.
The United States and Europe also rejected the Moscow plan, suggesting instead that international peacekeepers be sent into Transnistria ahead of any future settlement. There's also pressure for weapons inspections, but Smirnov's regime is only offering controlled one-off visits to its factories.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM HILL: How do you know when you've seen enough? I mean, the invitation to inspect a few factories at selected times is not something that was satisfactory to inspectors or to the UN in Iraq, and it's a problem that we've not been able to resolve here.
At President Igor Smirnov's most recent inauguration as Transnistria's leader, the Kremlin-style fanfare was proudly televised in defiance of mounting criticism from the West. In Tiraspol, the leadership continues to ignore the outside world. But in a world increasingly intolerant of rogue states with sinister reputations, Transnistria's future will become a more urgent priority.
MARK GALEOTTI: It was again, I think, a product of the pre 9/11 era that we hadn't really thought of just how dangerous these weapons systems would be in the hands of terrorists. It's only, I think, in the modern security environment that we actually start thinking not just will governments use these weapons, but what happens if and when these weapons end up in the hands of extremists or terrorists, or criminals or blackmailers and so forth. That is unfortunately the nature of the brave new world in which we live. So we've known about it but I think we've never really put it in the right kind of context until more recently.