A LANDMARK trial in Italy of Chinese crime gangs has suffered so many mishaps — from the disappearance of documents to the resignation of interpreters — that a senior prosecutor suspects it’s being sabotaged to protect the criminals’ grip on Europe’s fashion industry.
The case, launched after two Chinese men were hacked to death with machetes in 2010, is aimed at dismantling an illicit network accused of controlling the logistics of the continent’s multi-billion-euro garments sector from the city of Prato in Tuscany.
Instead, it has become a cautionary tale about the obstacles Italy’s justice system faces when confronting international organised crime without the tools it has used to fight home-grown mafia groups, prosecutors say.
“The suspicion is that there is interference from the Chinese community and Chinese authorities in this matter,” said Luca Tescaroli, a veteran of Italy’s war against the mafia who is now Prato’s chief prosecutor and leading the charge against Chinese crime gangs.
When the latest court interpreter failed to show up to a hearing at the end of September, a quick check revealed she had returned to China and her transcripts were “incomprehensible and unusable”, Tescaroli said.
The translator was the second to walk off the job and no other Chinese interpreter in Tuscany has agreed to take over.
Tescaroli has opened an investigation into the possibility that someone is looking to sink the trial.
The violence prosecutors hoped to curb has only intensified as the trial flounders, with the battle for control of coat hanger production and fast-fashion freight spawning a string of bomb and arson attacks in Italy, France and Spain.
The Prato prosecutor and his colleagues are pressing the judges in the so-called China Truck trial to define the Chinese gangs legally as mafia groups — a designation that would unlock sweeping powers, asset seizures and stiffer sentence.
However, in Italy that label is difficult to secure, even more so if the organisations are rooted abroad.
Wedged in the hills northwest of Florence, Prato is billed as Europe’s largest textile manufacturing hub, hosting more than 7,000 textile and garment companies that register some €2.3 billion in official annual exports. Over 4,400 firms are Chinese owned, local authorities say.
Prato’s streets are lined with Chinese-owned workshops, warehouses and businesses that have transformed the city into a global fast-fashion production centre, and a flashpoint for violence linked to criminal networks.
The China Truck investigation closed in 2018 with prosecutors alleging that the 58 suspects had formed “a criminal association equipped with very significant financial means … with support and resources abroad”.
Seven years on, not a single defendant or witness has been called to testify.
Meanwhile, the alleged mastermind, Zhang Naizhong, described by investigators as a “boss of bosses”, slipped back to China in 2018 after he was released from pre-trial custody and prosecutors doubt he will ever return to Italy.
Zhang and the other suspects have pleaded not guilty.
The case emerged from what Francesco Nannucci, then head of Prato’s police Flying Squad, described to Reuters as a war between two rival gangs, one originally from Zhejiang and the other from Fujian, for control of territory in Europe.
Despite keen police interest and multiple investigations in Prato, the gang violence has escalated in the past two years.
In July 2024, a Chinese businessman based in Prato was stabbed multiple times by a group of six men, including a former soldier, who had flown in from China, prosecutors said in a statement.
All six were arrested and sentenced to 7.5 years in jail for attempted murder.
In April of this year, Zhang Dayong, Zhang’s alleged right-hand man who was also charged in the China Truck case, was shot dead in Rome alongside his girlfriend. No one has been arrested for those killings.
The writers are from Reuters
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
