Update on Chinese organised crime next door in Italy

The BBC reports that prosecutors in Florence are seeking to indict on money-laundering charges senior officers of the Bank of China’s branch in Milan, and another 300 people.

The prosecutors say that €4.5 BILLION in proceeds of crime have been transferred from Italy to China via the Milan branch of the Bank of China. That money, they say, was made through racketeering, prostitution, counterfeiting and exploitation, with massive tax evasion on top of that.

Around €2.2 billion went through the Bank of China’s Milan branch in just three years between 2007 and 2010, the prosecutors claim, with the bank receiving €758,000 in commission for the transfers.

The money was transferred in literally millions of individual transactions kept below the €2,000 threshold for money-laundering checks. The threshold has since been halved to €1,000.

The Italian news agency ANSA said this “maxi-laundering” has strengthened Chinese organised crime considerably, particularly those criminal organisations which operate in illegal immigration from China. Eighteen months ago, seven Chinese migrants working in indentured labour conditions similar to those at Leisure Clothing died in a fire at a garment factory near Prato. Tuscany’s regional governor said at the time that some of the factories there are linked to Chinese organised crime.

The factory in Malta is owned by the Chinese government itself, which makes the abuse of its migrant workers – and the fact that it uses migrant workers in the first place – even more shocking.