ROME, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Italian police said on Thursday they had broken up an international criminal organisation that had swindled some 30 million euros ($35.2 million) from victims including the cultural body that manages Florence’s artistic monuments.
Prosecutors in the northern city of Brescia issued warrants for the arrest of 10 people including Italian, Nigerian, Albanian and Chinese nationals accused of money laundering and issuing false invoices.
They launched the investigation after the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, a non-profit organisation that manages Florence cathedral and other city landmarks, reported that it had been the victim of an email scam.
Intercepting email correspondence, criminals posed as the company that carried out restoration and conservation work for the Opera and received nearly 1.8 million euros from it, a police statement said.
Authorities managed to retrieve about 300,000 euros, leaving the organisation short of almost 1.5 million euros.
Their broader investigation uncovered a growing ring of loan-sharking and money laundering by Chinese criminal organisations in Italy, said Brescia’s Chief Prosecutor Francesco Prete.
“Chinese money laundering is taking on worrying dimensions because we can’t understand what the source of the cash supply is,” he said at a news conference.
None of the people arrested or being sought by police were named.
($1 = 0.8511 euros)
(Reporting By Gavin Jones, editing by Alvise Armellini)
