Italy Reportedly Activates Anti-Mafia Commission to Investigate Chinese Infiltration

Italian Carabinieri and Chinese police on joint patrol with two Chinese tourists in the center of Milan on June 1, 2018. The joint patrols between Italian Carabinieri and Chinese police were mostly carried out in Rome, Milan, Venice, and Prato. Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images

The Italian government has reportedly activated the Anti-Mafia Commission to investigate the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the country.

In addition to investigating the illegal activities of the Italian mafia, it will intensify efforts to combat the illicit activities of Chinese gangs, under the control of the CCP, infiltrating Italian society and collaborating with corrupt officials.

The agency will extend its reach to Prato, a city near Florence that serves as a major textile and accessory manufacturing hub and is also home to a sizable Chinese community.

According to Italian law enforcement, Prato has become a center for Chinese organized crime.

Chinese ‘Overseas Police Service Stations’ in Italy

On Dec. 5, 2022, human rights group Safeguard Defenders released a report indicating that as of September 2021, the CCP had established 54 police stations in 53 countries worldwide and an additional 48 “overseas police service stations” that purportedly assist Chinese citizens with administrative affairs. In reality, these stations operate under bilateral security agreements with host countries, functioning as “police stations” that surveil Chinese expatriates and facilitate the return of dissidents to China.

Giuseppe Morabito, director of the NATO Defense College Foundation, told Italian magazine L'Espresso on Dec. 19, 2022, that Italy has the highest number of Chinese overseas police bases, with 11 in total. Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, Sicily, and Prato are all home to these so-called service stations.

Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi stated during a question-and-answer session in the Chamber last December that the Department of Public Security “does not have any authorization regarding the activity” of Chinese centers for handling paperwork in Italy.

“I assure you that the police forces, in constant liaison with the intelligence sector, are monitoring the issue with the utmost attention. I will personally follow the developments ... not excluding sanctions in case of illegality,” he said.

In September 2015, Italy and China signed a memorandum of understanding for joint patrols and launched a “pilot project.”

The first joint patrol occurred in May 2016 when four Chinese police officers joined their Italian counterparts in the streets of Rome and Milan, especially at tourist hotspots.

In reciprocity, four Italian police officers and their Chinese counterparts in April 2017 conducted the first joint patrol in popular tourist sites in Beijing and Shanghai.

However, on Dec. 19, 2022, Piantedosi stated that the Italian government had decided to terminate joint patrols on Italian territory. He pointed out that the CCP has always used iron-handed policies to suppress dissidents, including violating the human rights of Uyghurs and Tibetans. It is difficult to believe that the so-called Chinese service stations in Italy are only intended to provide administrative services to Chinese citizens, he said.

Municipal police captain Flora Leoni (L) approaches Chinese laborers at a garment factory during a raid in Prato, Italy, a town outside Florence with one of the highest concentrations of Chinese immigrants in Europe, on June 18, 2014. Italian police documented dozens of small Chinese-run businesses—many of them garment factories powered by under-paid immigrants working illegally—making remittances of hundreds of thousands of euros, despite declared earnings in the tens of thousands, or less. Erika Kinetz/AP Photo

Chinese Nationals Arrested

According to a report by Le Formiche on March 16, authorities in Florence arrested two Chinese nationals for their involvement in illegal money laundering, while 13 others have been identified as suspects.

The case involves a secret Chinese bank with branches in Rome, Florence, and Prato that has transferred billions of euros to China. Italian authorities have referred to it as the “Chinese underground bank.” The bank provided covert remittance services and charged a commission of 2.5 percent on the transferred amount.

The crime of money laundering run by the “Chinese Mafia” in Italy has been ongoing for the past few years.

Agence France-Presse reported on Dec. 18, 2014, that Rome police had uncovered Chinese business owners and entrepreneurs engaging in smuggling, selling counterfeit products, and evading taxes. To transfer their illegal proceeds to China, they used British financial company Sigue.

Sigue has seven branches in Rome and primarily caters to the remittance needs of local Chinese residents. The transfers often use fake names and those of deceased individuals, as well as Sigue’s unsuspecting customers, the report said. Sigue also splits the transfers into multiple transactions to keep each one below the Italian government’s reporting threshold for anti-money laundering regulations.

Chinese Banks Involved in Illegal Activities

On June 21, 2015, Italian prosecutors filed a lawsuit against 297 people and the Bank of China, as the bank’s Italian branch was accused of assisting in laundering illicit funds. The individuals indicted included four senior managers of the bank’s Milan branch.

According to Italian investigators, underground banks with connections to China can launder billions of dollars without leaving a trace.

Italian police have discovered that within less than four years until 2010, over 4.5 billion euros from counterfeit activities, prostitution, labor exploitation, and tax evasion were transferred to China through remittance services. Among them, 2.2 billion euros were transferred through the Bank of China’s Milan branch.

The prosecution’s indictment is based on an investigation called “River of Money” that began in 2008. The illegal money was sent to China through a remittance intermediary called Money2Money, and the Bank of China received an intermediary fee of 758,000 euros.

The prosecution had sought help from Chinese authorities but to no avail. Once the money left Italy, it disappeared into China’s internet firewall.

Local Chinese Nationals ‘Keep Cash at Home’

A Chinese national living in Rome surnamed Ma told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that her friends who run a business in Italy usually do not deposit their money in the national bank. They keep large amounts of cash in their home safes because they would have to pay taxes if they deposited the money in a bank, she said.

Italy’s personal income tax is high, with almost half of the income being taxed—Chinese nationals are very unwilling to accept this, she added.

“For a long time, the left has been in power, advocating a welfare state under socialism. However, despite being a high-tax state, Italy is far behind the high-welfare countries of northern Europe, and its residents have not enjoyed the services that such a state is supposed to provide,” Ma said.

When asked where the high taxes went, she replied: “They have all been embezzled by high-ranking [Italian] officials. There have been many such reports in the media, and they are no less corrupt than the corrupt officials in the Chinese Communist Party. So, you see, Chinese people naturally don’t want to pay taxes to support these corrupt officials. They prefer to keep cash at home, even though they know clearly that such practice is risky.”

This also sheds light on why some Chinese prefer to use underground banks for remittances, allowing criminals to exploit their situation.