If you needed to rent a car in Pero, just outside Milan, this was apparently not the place to go. Italian investigators say the business was a front for a “banca occulta”, a hidden bank serving organised crime.
The raid
On 21 October, the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's financial police, carried out 30 arrest orders on the instructions of Milan's anti-mafia prosecutors: 16 people went to prison and 14 under house arrest. More than 350 officers searched sites in several Italian provinces. Arrests also took place in Spain, and one in Switzerland, where the suspect is being held pending extradition.
Police seized more than €21 million in cash, bank balances, crypto, cars, boats, jewellery and luxury watches, along with money-counting machines. Handy, in a car rental office.
How the “bank” allegedly worked
Prosecutors say it was run by three Italians with links to the 'Ndrangheta and the Camorra, and also served the Foggia-based groups known as the “fourth mafia”. Chinese and Albanian accomplices allegedly helped out.
The mechanism was old-fashioned. Shell companies issued over €110 million in invoices for services nobody provided. Clients paid by bank transfer, then got the money back in cash, minus a commission of 2% to 5%. The clients, according to investigators, were mainly drug traffickers and tax evaders.
Then came the modern part. Around €68 million moved abroad, through banks in Luxembourg, Lithuania and Germany, and on through crypto exchanges to wallets controlled by the network.
The twist
Part of the profits, prosecutor Marcello Viola said, went into what he called a “mafia solidarity fund”, supporting 'Ndrangheta members in prison. A hidden bank with employee benefits, in other words.
The case also reaches uncomfortably close to the system meant to stop it. A Guardia di Finanza inspector is under house arrest on corruption charges, and a driver at a Milan court office who handled seized assets is accused of illegally accessing an IT system.
Everyone involved is presumed innocent until a verdict. The court order alone runs to more than 500 pages, so there's plenty of reading before that.