Italian
mafia families have begun using Hong Kong as a base for financial crimes
By Antonio
Talia | The Diplomat
There
are many “soft spots” in the world: some of them are haunted by organized
crime, some others are known to turn sometimes a blind eye to illicit money,
and certain individuals are capable of making huge fortunes by connecting the
two dots on a map.
But
on a summer afternoon in 2012 the Italian investigators listening to a tapped
conversation between a ‘Ndrangheta Don and a broker could not believe their
ears, because these particular “soft spots” were unimaginably distant, even for
men used to investigating criminals with an international attitude. As far as
investigators knew, ‘Ndrangheta (pronounced “An-Dran-Gh-Ta”) — the
Calabrian version of Cosa Nostra, ranking in the last 20 years as the most
powerful Italian crime syndicate — had established connections with Canada and
Australia, but never ventured into the Far East.
Or
so they thought.
The first man on the
phone, Giuseppe Pensabene — aka “The Pope” — was no stranger to the detectives
of SCO, a special squad of the Italian police focused on organized crime. Born in 1968 in Montebello Jonico, a tiny
village in Italy’s southern region of Calabria and a ‘Ndrangheta stronghold,
Pensabene started his criminal career in the early 1980 by joining the Imertis,
a “respected family” involved in the so-called “Second ‘Ndrangheta War,” a
bloody feud in which almost 500 people were killed between 1985 and 1991.
In
1988, Pensabene moved north and settled in Brianza, the region surrounding
Milan and one of Italy’s wealthiest areas. But as every investigator working on
Calabrian syndicates might confirm, it seems you can not teach a new trick to
an old ‘Ndrangheta mobster: “The Pope” turned into a professional of extortion,
drug trafficking, and money laundering. After the spate of arrests known as
“Operazione Crimine-Infinito,” in 2010 he was eventually crowned boss of one of
Northern Italy’s most notorious organizations.
The second
voice on the phone was an Italian-Swiss broker named Emanuele Sangiovanni. As
investigators listened in, he said, “This company is good, it guarantees a
double shielding… First step is a trust company in Malta, second step is a Hong
Kong company, so it’s virtually unreachable for authorities. The administrator
is a Hong Kongese architect.”
“How
do I do this from Italy?” Pensabene replied.
“You
need an attorney, someone you can trust… Or you can reach an agreement and make
the guy come here [to Europe], but it’s too expensive, we have to do this
in Malta.”
“I’ll
take care of it.”
When
“The Pope,” Emanuele Sangiovanni, and 38 other people were arrested in 2014
Italian investigators seized goods, apartments, bank accounts, and 39 companies
worth dozens of millions of euros. From a tiny office in Brianza with no
windows and no toilets, dubbed “il tugurio” (“the shack”), Pensabene and his
organization were able to launder several million euros for their Calabrian
cousins, working as the financial arm of the southern clans deeply involved in
cocaine trafficking.
The
investigators never managed to fully identify the “Hong Kongese architect,” but
his shell company was not the only clue pointing to a connection between
Pensabene and the Far East. Almost 100 percent of the clients requesting
Pensabene’s “services” were Calabrian gangs, but a certain invoice attracted
the detectives’ attention: a Chinese company named Fengrun International Ltd. It
was connected to Pensabene’s shady web through several bank transfers for
hundreds of thousands of euros. The key figure in this deal was Giuseppe
Vinciguerra, a 40-something Sicilian who connected the Calabrian mobsters with
businessmen looking for a safe way to clean their money and provided Pensabene
and his partners with many firearms at his disposal after some former deals.
In
2012, according to the SCO, the Pensabene-Vinciguerra joint venture was worth
8.2 million euros ($9.6 million), and the Sicilian had already accomplished a
plan to diversify their business targeting new markets and brand new customers:
the Chinese.
Vinciguerra
had been a person of interest since the end of “Operazione
Crimine-Infinito” and his different mobile phones were tapped, regardless
of his efforts to switch from one telephone to another on a weekly basis. In
December 2011 SCO detectives listened to six conversations between Vinciguerra
and a Chinese national dubbed “Michele.”
The
two men were discussing several different “deliveries,” “containers,”
“parcels,” and “journeys,” referring to bank transfers that might — or might
not — be related to Fengrun International Ltd.
On
the evening of December 11, Vinciguerra and “Michele” agreed to meet to tie up
some loose ends, and the investigators — who were clueless about the true
identity of “Michele” — decided to put up a surveillance system around the
Sicilian. The next afternoon, a blue Volkswagen Touareg parked side by side
with Vinciguerra’s Mercedes SW in the courtyard behind GMB, a company in the
whereabouts of Milan the mobsters used as a facade for their activities.
A
30-something-year-old Asian stepped into the Mercedes and the two men spent the
next two hours discussing, unaware that police officers hidden at a convenient
distance were shooting pictures and tracking their mobiles.
The
Volkswagen’s plate number and the phone in the Asian man’s pocket were
eventually traced to Chen Sheng, born in 1981 in Zhejiang province, China.
The Chinese national, owner of a prosperous waste-disposal company in
Milan, had reported the theft of his mobile to the police several months before
and the investigators never managed to prove whether he was or was not the same
“Michele” in partnership with the Calabrians for a money laundering scheme.
“It
is very likely they were the same person but the chances are not
100 percent. Actually, by listening other phone conversations, we cannot
confirm that the man discussing in Italian with a Chinese accent with
Vinciguerra was always the same person,” says one of the investigators,
hinting at a broader audience of Chinese customers for the Calabrians’
“special services.”
Pensabene,
Sangiovanni, Vinciguerra, and all the others were found guilty of mafia-type
conspiracy, money laundering, loan sharking, extortion, attempted smuggling,
possessing of undeclared firearms, and several other felonies. Although the
“Asian connection” is still under investigation, it soon turned out they were
not the only ‘Ndrangheta wiseguys looking at the Far East for opportunities. Somebody
had arrived in Hong Kong long before them.
Like
many Calabrian crime stories, these two tales are obliquely intertwined: in
December 2014 the Milanese DDA (Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia) arrested 59
people for accusations of various criminal activities. The Martino
brothers, Giulio and Vincenzo, are accused of being the leaders of a dangerous
organization with legal and illegal interests in many different businesses. Born
in Reggio Calabria — the region’s biggest town, and the most plagued by
organized crime — both brothers trace the beginning of their criminal
career back to the infamous Second War of ‘Ndrangheta.
During
this vicious feud for supremacy over the Calabrian gangs — in a time when
Reggio Calabria and neighboring villages experienced execution-style murders
almost every day for six long years — the Martino brothers were part of the
DeStefano family, a name largely synonymous with the quintessential aristocracy
of Calabrian crime. In their 20s, Giulio and Vincenzo found themselves battling
against a 20-something Giuseppe “Not-Yet-The-Pope” Pensabene, initiated to the
mob by DeStefanos’ bitter enemies, the Imerti family.
Now,
in 2011, 500 murders and exactly 20 years after the Second War of ‘Ndrangheta
ended with a truce between the DeStefanos, the Imertis, and their allies, the
Martino brothers were sitting in a bar in Milan face-to-face with their former
rival to strike a bargain. What happened?
Both
“The Pope” and the Martino brothers had been aware of each others’ presence in
Milan for many years, but their paths never crossed until two Milanese
businessmen, in financial trouble, asked for the Dons’ help to solve a
potential conflict. Cristiano Sala was an entrepreneur whose companies offered
many catering services to San Siro Stadium, the arena where A.C. Milan and
Inter Milan play soccer every week. And yet, Sala was in dire need of money,
and in a desperate effort asked Pensabene’s help to persuade Marco Santulli,
another businessman who owed him at least 500 thousand euros, to pay up —
by any means. Santulli, knowing that there was a powerful Don behind Sala
turned to the Martino brothers for help. The former ‘Ndrangheta enemies had
learned their lesson from the previous war in Calabria, and instead of
battling again found an appeasement between the concerned parties. That’s how
the Martinos met Sala, who eventually started working for them and helped the
Calabrese brothers to infiltrate his network of Milanese wealthy entrepreneurs.
After
a decade-long conviction for cocaine trafficking, Giulio and Vincenzo Martino
became apparently “respectable,” investing in several businesses from
construction to car dealers, but in fact they had never quit their old habits:
Edmondo Colangelo, one of their henchmen, was caught in the port city of Genoa
buying 283 kilograms of cocaine through some Dominican connections, an
investment worth millions of euros. It became clear to the investigators who
were trying to nail them that the Martinos had kept their huge wealth even
during the long years spent in prison through some hidden bank accounts; now
these funds were finally back at their disposal.
The
financial mind who made this possible was Francesco Longo, an Italian
broker established in Switzerland whose role finally came under the spotlight
after months of investigations. The Martinos were trying to buy the majority
stake of a big hotel on the Riviera, between Italy and France, but to reach
their goal they first needed to have some of their hidden cash back. On a
brisk Milanese morning in March 2011, during a meeting between Giulio
Martino and his financial broker Longo held at the Western Palace Hotel, the
investigators managed to catch this conversation:
“The
companies in that list… These are our companies in Dubai. Peter took the money,
but… Oh! They made such a mess, they created 10 companies because they can’t
keep the money frozen, the money needs to flow,” said Longo.
“I
know,” answered Martino.
“So,
do you know where this money comes from? It comes from Hong Kong!”
“Yes,
I know. Hong Kong.”
“The
money comes from Hong Kong, flows to Dubai, and then… Every time somebody ask
for this they owe me 15 [percent]. So, if you ask me to [handle] 5
million… It’s always 15 [percent].”
“That’s
normal.”
The
detectives eventually found confirmation that from 1996 to 2009 the Martinos
had kept their hidden capitals in Switzerland and Hong Kong through Edmondo
Colangelo, the Martinos’ henchman and drug dealer. Colangelo started
cooperating with the authorities after his arrest. Here is a transcript of his
declarations to the District Attorney:
DA:
Do you have any knowledge about financial operations by Franco Longo involving
the Martino Brothers, especially in Dubai and Hong Kong?
Colangelo:
In 2011 Giulio Martino told me that , before they were arrested in 1996, both
he and his brother Vincenzo kept their money in some confidential bank accounts
in Switzerland. He also mentioned that he went through some difficulties
because the Swiss bank was acquired by a larger financial institution, and he
could have lost his money because of the increasing controls. So he asked for
Longo’s help, and he told me that Longo managed to get his money back through
foreign bank accounts in Hong Kong and Dubai. But I don’t have any other
details.
DA:
The Franco Longo you mentioned in several occasions, do you know what’s his
job?
Colangelo:
Frankly, I never fully understood. Giulio Martino said that Longo had a trust
company in Switzerland, that he was a man who knew “how to make the money
flow,” and that he “had the right acquaintances.”
According
to some investigators, these “acquaintances” included the mysterious “Peter”
mentioned in the tapped conversation between Long and Martino at the Western
Palace Hotel in Milan, and also a certain “Oliver” whose name pops up here and
there in many other confidential conversations. The identity of these men still
remains unknown, even after Longo’s arrest, but few people at DDA think that
these individuals might be anything else than careful middlemen, brokers hidden
in “soft spots” on the financial world map, like Dubai and Hong Kong.
But
in this shadowy world of mobsters and financial brokers there was also another
specific individual eager to help the ‘Ndrangheta to travel across the Silk
Road: a politician. Former Senator Nicola Di Girolamo is a Roman lawyer
who — according to “Operazione Phuncards-Broker,” an investigation led by
Rome’s DA — owed his seat at the Italian Senate to the Arena family. That
particular ‘Ndrangheta clan, based in Isola Capo Rizzuto — a small village in
northern Calabria — spread its men and its money across Italy and several
European countries.
Di
Girolamo ran his campaign for Silvio Berlusconi’s party PDL (Partito della
Libertà) and was elected in 2008, but in the previous years he had been working
hard behind the scenes to win the Arenas’ support. As the investigators
unraveled his past movements, they found evidence that at the end of 2006 Di
Girolamo was traveling across Southeast Asia to take care of “the family
businesses.” At the end of November 2006, Di Girolamo was in Hong Kong to
establish several shell companies such as New Success Ltd., Y2K Diamonds, and
Super Harvest Finance. At the beginning of December he was in Kuala Lumpur
and then in Singapore, where he left some traces of expensive payments at the
lavish Raffles Hotel.
What
Di Girolamo did not know, at the time, was that within three years he
would find himself at the epicenter of a huge scandal: the web of shell
companies he set up was meant for a huge tax evasion scheme that benefited both
the top management of two of Italy’s most important IT companies and the Arena
family itself. The scheme was nicknamed in Italian “Carosello” (“Carousel
Tax Fraud”): the shell companies were used to sell to each other fake IT
services in order to provide the mother companies with an illegal exemption of
VAT. According to the investigators, Di Girolamo’s contact in Hong Kong was an
individual named “Raymond Choi” or “Raymond Chan”: in 2007 the phone calls
between the two men and several others involved in the scheme became frantic,
as they grew aware of the attention of the authorities that their illicit
activities had already drawn, but the identity of “Raymond” has never
been established.
One
of these persons of interest in the case, Silvio Fanella, allegedly the
bookkeeper of the organization, was shot dead in Rome in 2014 while he was
serving four years of home detention. The killers, disguised with the
uniforms of Guardia di Finanza — the Italian military police responsible for
enforcing financial laws — were never found. Di Gregorio, Fanella, Gennaro
Mokbel — allegedly the leader of the gang — and 50 other people, including some
men of the Arena family, were formally charged with several crimes, including
tax evasion and money laundering. Some cautious estimates shows that between
February 2006 and February 2007, in Hong Kong alone, the organization managed
to hide from Italian revenue authorities approximately 14 millions euros.
Many
investigations are still ongoing, but the road to the east is already open. It
seems that the ‘Ndrangheta has fallen in love with Hong Kong and the
honeymoon is far from over.
*Antonio
Talia is an Italian journalist who has reported widely on China and Asia.
Photo:
The skyline of Hong Kong is seen through a fence at the Peak in Hong Kong
(September 10, 2014) | Image
Credit: REUTERS/Bobby Yip
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