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Matthew Vella
Italy’s secret services director, Nicolò Pollari, had little to say about the Maltese authorities’ assistance in the quest to severe the tentacles of the Chinese Mafia in the Mediterranean: a lack of co-operation.
The head of the Italian SISMI was addressing a convention in Rome on the phenomenon of the Chinese Mafia and its roots in the Italian peninsula, when he described Malta as “an important base of transition” for would-be Chinese migrants desperate to enter a fortified Europe.
Pollari said the Chinese presence remains firmly rooted in prosperous Italian regions such as Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and Lazio. As migratory flows increase all over the country, with Catholic aid group Caritas citing 100,000 Chinese migrants entering Italy in 2004, it is believed the figure is “merely reductive” and that far greater numbers actually exist.
Dubbed “an invisible threat”, Pollari said the new Chinese Mafia, possibly autonomous from the feared Triads, have their roots in Italy firmly planted, and that connections with Camorristi – Italy’s notorious Southern criminal organisation – were apparent.
With migration flows “out of control”, Pollari affirmed that it was the Balkans which represented the “privileged” route of access for entry, with Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina supplanting the once favoured Serbian point of entry.
“The Chinese influx is however entering Italy even through maritime routes and Malta is an important transit base: in fact our authorities found little co-operation with the Maltese authorities,” Pollari complained.
According to the SISMI director, there are strong connections between the Chinese and the Camorra in the destitute Southern region of Campania, where an entire network of money laundering is at hand with the operations of hotels, capital investments of illegal gains in legitimate enterprises, contraband, counterfeiting, and “a general violation of EU norms.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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