Much less is known about Italy’s Chinese organized crime groups than the country’s more famous home-grown mafias. Federico Varese, a professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford, said research into Chinese organized crime focuses “mainly on the Hong Kong triads and their offshoots in London, New York and California.”

Most of the Chinese immigrants in Europe, including Italy, emigrated from the eastern region of Zhejiang after China began to open its borders in the late 1980s. Many settled in Prato as the home of Europe’s textiles industry, much of which is now run by Chinese companies that make cheap clothes for export across the continent.

Stefano Becucci, professor of Sociology at University of Florence, said Chinese organized crime has been operating in Italy since the 1990s, smuggling people and trafficking drugs, but Italian law enforcement has struggled to investigate them.

“All the crimes are done within the Chinese communities, mainly from Zhejiang. This makes investigations harder,” he said. “Over 30 years, there have been only a handful of non-Chinese victims out of hundreds of violent acts. And only a few agents speak the Zhejiang dialect.”

Cont'd:
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/murder-drugs-and-extortion-in-tuscanys-chinese-underworld