Drugs cartels operating in Italy are increasingly using shadow networks of unlicensed Chinese money brokers to conceal cross-border payments, according to Italian judicial and law enforcement authorities
The development highlights how an issue that U.S. authorities have been battling in connection to Latin American narcotics groups has taken root in Europe.
Italian authorities have announced at least six investigations involving drug gangs and the Chinese payment networks since the issue first publicly came to light about five years ago. Those probes involve alleged payments to narcotics suppliers in Latin America, Morocco and Spain, according to authorities and judicial documents reviewed by Reuters.
One of the people said there were about a dozen additional investigations underway involving money transfers or other illicit activity connected to Chinese organisations that haven’t been made public. The person, who has direct knowledge of those probes, estimated tens of billions of euros each year were being moved out of Italy via the underground system.
According to an October 2022 arrest warrant, D’Onofrio paid 180,000 euros to a Chinese intermediary during a March 2020 visit to Milan’s Chinatown to pay suppliers in Spain for a shipment of hashish. The intermediary sent a text message to a counterpart in Spain to hand over a corresponding sum to the suppliers and charged D’Onofrio 2,700 euros in commission - the equivalent of 1.5% - for the transaction, the arrest warrant detailed.
Between 2.5 million euros and 4 million euros were shipped out of Rome’s Fiumicino airport each week from October 2019 to October 2021, according to the Carabinieri.
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