Word: extortionate
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Bangladeshis, who have to cope with frequent cyclones from the Indian Ocean and regular outbursts of violence on the streets of their own cities, are a tough, stoic lot who don't frighten easily. But a wave of extortion, murder and kidnapping that is washing over the country of 140...
But the system has now broken down. According to one of the country's leading businessmen, extortion "has become a daily event." Calls are regularly made to his factories by extortionists asking for money. He once refused to pay up. The result: his workers were attacked on their way to...
Compounding the chaos is political paralysis. Many Bangladeshis say routine corruption morphed into rampant extortion after the 2001 parliamentary election, when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came to power with the aid of fundamentalist Islamic allies. A wide cross-section of Bangladeshis, from prominent businessmen to shopkeepers to truck drivers...
Massino, 61, has other legitimate businesses (Cafe Via Vento, in Maspeth) and properties (in Queens and Palm Coast, Fla.), but his favorite is the CasaBlanca. From that neighborhood ristorante, he has allegedly run an operation that, the feds assert, includes extortion, loan sharking, illegal gambling, narcotics and murder in a...
Last week French officials tried to pay AZF the equivalent of $5.2 million it had demanded for revealing the location of other bombs. But after an attempt to deliver the ransom to a field 65 miles south of Paris failed, French officials dispatched 10,000 workers to inspect the nation...