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.