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How China and Chinese Mafias Overseas Protect Each Other’s Interests
Sebastian Rotella (ProPublica) 14 July 2023
Economy & Nation
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
 
The rise of Chinese organized crime in Europe highlights its ties to the Chinese state, national security officials say. Recent cases show the suspected role of mobsters in Beijing’s campaign to repress diaspora communities and amass influence.
 
PRATO, Italy — On a rainy June afternoon, six Chinese mobsters hurried across the plaza of a drab apartment complex near the medieval gates of this Tuscan textile capital.
 
Their targets, two gang rivals in their early 20s, were eating in a small Chinese diner. Drawing machetes, the attackers stormed in.
 
They hacked one man to death, splattering tables and walls with gore. The second victim fought his way out. Trailing blood in the rain, he staggered through the plaza pursued by his killers, who finished him off on the sidewalk around the corner.
 
The slaughter on Via Strozzi in 2010 was part of a startling escalation of mob violence in Prato, which has one of Europe’s biggest Chinese immigrant communities. The ensuing police investigation was long and difficult, leading as far as China. For the first time, Italian police mapped the rapid spread of the Chinese mafias that were terrorizing immigrant enclaves and leaving a trail of casualties across Europe.
 
As the investigation culminated in 2017, detectives made another ominous discovery: The kingpins in Italy had high-placed friends in Beijing. Telephone intercepts detected a meeting between an accused crime boss in Rome, Zhang Naizhong, and a member of a high-level Chinese government delegation on a diplomatic visit to Italy, senior Italian law enforcement officials say.
 
“A guy like Zhang does what the consulate doesn’t do, or does it better,” a senior Italian national security official said. “If you want in-depth street information, intelligence, you go to a guy like Zhang. He has a network, power, resources. He knows the diaspora. He is feared and respected.”
 
As the regime of President Xi Jinping expands its international power, it has intensified its alliance with Chinese organized crime overseas. The Italian investigation and other cases in Europe show the underworld’s front-line role in a campaign to infiltrate the West, amass wealth and influence, and control diaspora communities as if they were colonies of Beijing’s police state.
 
Around the world, China’s shadow war of espionage, long-distance repression, political interference and predatory capitalism is drawing attention and alarm. Governments and human rights groups have denounced in recent months a global network of covert Chinese police stations that spy on Chinese migrant communities and persecute dissidents — wherever they live. As ProPublica has reported, the Chinese state has sent illegal undercover teams to chase down fugitives in wealthy U.S. suburbs, surveilled and silenced Chinese students on foreign campuses, and allegedly supported the Chinese money laundering underworld that fortifies cartels inundating the Americas with deadly drugs.
 
But the rise of Chinese organized crime in Europe has caught authorities largely off-guard. An examination of it offers an unusually vivid look at a covert alliance in action. ProPublica has documented a pattern of cases, some of them unreported and others little-noticed internationally, in which suspected underworld figures in Europe have teamed up with Chinese security forces and other state entities.
 
The partnership appears to mix geopolitics and corruption for mutual benefit. Gangsters help monitor and intimidate immigrant communities for the regime in Beijing, sometimes as leaders of cultural associations that are key players in China’s political influence operations and long-distance repression, Western security officials say. ProPublica has learned that suspected underworld figures in Italy and Spain took part in launching several of the secret Chinese police stations that caused an uproar when their existence became public last year. Continue Reading…
 
Comments
mail.rsvp
2 years ago
Most of the govt have covert operations eliminating people who are criminals or people who committed crimes and supported by regimes for money. Beyond that slso chinese and russians and possibly americans collaborate with criminals for this purpose. Only in India, our media will raise big issues and talk anout laws, illegality protecting the criminals. India should use covert operation , but unfortunately media in order to earn eyeballs and not in India’s security interests get info on covert oprn and show as breaking news. Has any breaking news seen in chinese or russian media.
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