Tuesday, June 29, 2010
How do You Say Mafia in Chinese? Chinese Gangs Step Into Gap Left by Crippled Mafia
The success of the Italian police in crippling the Mafia, has provided opportunities for Chinese Gangs. Police just arrested 17 Chinese and seven Italian nationals and took control of 73 companies, 181 pieces of real estate and seized 166 luxury cars, and have estimated that $ 3.3 Billion have been laundered since 2006.
Chinese criminal gangs chose to move in to exploit niche markets in the central and northern cities hosting rapidly growing Chinese illegal immigrants particularly around the Tuscan cities of Florence and Prato, an industrial town home to a large community of Chinese migrants.
Chinese Gangs Step Into Gap Left by Mafia
Chinese gangs have exploited a gap in Italy's crime world, expanding into northern and central cities while the traditional mafia concentrates on the country's south.
London Telegraph; June 29, 2010
Italian police targeted the Chinese gangs in raids across the country this week, arresting 24 people with suspected links to a multibillion euro money-laundering operation.
Officers seized illegal factories and other assets as part of the operation.
Since 2006, the organisation had laundered and funnelled to China more than 2.7 billion euros (£2.1bn pounds) from prostitution, sale of counterfeit goods, exploitation of illegal immigrants, tax evasion and other crimes committed in and around the Tuscan cities of Florence and Prato, an industrial town home to a large community of Chinese migrants.
Police arrested 17 Chinese and seven Italian nationals under suspicion of mafia association and took control of 73 companies and 181 pieces of real estate and seized 166 luxury cars, said a police statement.
With Italy's own Mafia entrenched in Sicily and the south, investigators said it was is natural that Chinese criminal gangs chose to move in to exploit niche markets in the central and northern cities hosting rapidly growing Chinese populations.
The Chinese crime ring was run by the Cai family from the central province of Hubei, who partnered with an Italian family owning a money wire transfer company to recycle dirty money "from the illicit business activities carried out by the numerous Chinese companies" in the area, the statement said.
The way the two families carried out business had all of the "mafioso characteristics."
"The head of the organisation... controlled with psychological threats and violence the illicit activities of the Chinese community throughout the region," the statement said.
The organisation also facilitated the illegal immigration of Chinese nationals who were forced into prostitution or given work in the textile industry.
The clandestine migrants, who had paid 13,000 euros, were kept in "inhuman" living and working conditions, with "vexations, beatings, and death threats for those who did not paid off their debt with the organisation."
More than one hundred people are being investigated in the probe, which also led to the seizure of 780,000 counterfeit goods.
Tuscany has a large Chinese community, with about 30,000 Chinese living and working - often illegally- in the textile industry around Prato.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/
italy/7859991/Chinese-gangs-step-into-gap-left-by-mafia.html
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