Chinese gangs step into gap left by mafia

[DutchGangster69]

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.

talian 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.

[alexalonso]

I know that the Chinese are the most migrated people on the planet, but would not have known they were kicking up dust in Italy.