Fifty-eight arrests for international drug trafficking between Italy and Spain are underway by the soldiers of the Guardia di Finanza of Milan on behalf of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of the Lombardy Prosecutor's Office.
The maxi operation focuses on international drug trafficking, money laundering, abusive lending and tax fraud .
Discovered, in detail, supply channels of a marijuana and hashish dealing network for approximately 30 tons and reconstructed trafficking for 42 million euros with a cash turnover of 26 million euros in just over a year.
Ten companies, 52 properties in Lombardy and other Italian regions and movable assets and sums of nine million euros were seized .
Those arrested are of Italian, Spanish, Albanian and Chinese nationality . The latter, in particular, offered abusive "banking services" and collected the money to be transferred to Spain with a system similar to the Islamic hawala.
Chinese merchants received cash which they transferred anonymously for a fee.
In particular, the money delivered by drug traffickers to Chinese businesses , amounting to tens of millions of euros, was immediately "sold" to a different criminal association made up of Italian entrepreneurs operating in the steel and plastic sectors, dedicated to systematic VAT fraud with the use of invoices for non-existent transactions with bank transfers abroad to China, Switzerland and Hong Kong.
In the fraudulent scheme, the payment of invoices for non-existent transactions is correlated with the subsequent return of the related amounts in cash, without being traced by anti-money laundering bodies.
The investigation is a continuation of that of last November which led to 42 precautionary measures. Among the suspects who ended up in prison was Rosario D'Onofrio, a 42-year-old former soldier and also former chief prosecutor of the Hague, the Italian referees' association.
(Unioneonline/vl)
