A Chinese suspected gangster has been shot dead in Rome in what investigators believe is a feud between rival clans for control of the fake designer goods trade.
Zhang Dayong, 53, was killed along with his girlfriend Gong Xiaoquing, 38, in what appears to have been a targeted assassination by a gunman outside their apartment in the Pigneto district of the Italian capital.
The double homicide late on Monday appeared to be a professional hit and the first execution-style killing of Chinese mafia members in Rome.
The couple were shot at close range in the head and chest with at least six rounds from a 9mm weapon before the assassin fled on foot.
Emergency services work at the scene outside the couple’s apartment
Police suspect that the hit was part of a long-running turf war within Italy’s Chinese criminal networks for a slice of the fake goods market.
Counterfeit Gucci, Chanel and Louis Vuitton designer handbags and clothes have become big business worth billions of euros.
It is believed Zhang may have crossed someone from a rival clan or tried to move in on a business run by another triad gang.
Investigators said the dead man worked for Zhang Naizhong, who is on trial in Florence over allegations he coordinated illegal operations across Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.
The accused man had acquired a near monopoly in distribution of goods across much of Europe through threats and violence against Chinese company owners, anti-mafia prosecutors said.
Police cars and officers in the area where the couple were shot
Zhang Dayong was allegedly a debt collector and enforcer, and was previously based in the town of Prato in Tuscany.
The town, close to Florence, is home to at least 20,000 Chinese people and the centre of a lucrative textiles sector that produces billions of euros worth of fast fashion clothing and fake designer goods.
The Chinese have been established in Prato for decades, providing cheap labour sleeping in squalid dormitories and working in sweatshops.
Shadowy world of fake fashion capital
It is a shadowy world that investigators have struggled to penetrate – lookouts on foot or on bicycles keep tabs on strangers and there is a language barrier, with many of the workers not speaking Italian or English.
And unlike Italian mafia organisations, there is no tradition of informers who divulge information to the police in exchange for more lenient sentences.
There are occasional raids by police but they have little effect on the more than 4,000 Chinese-owned businesses in Prato.
Rival Chinese clans are engaged in a battle for control of the sector, in particular the warehousing of products and their distribution by truck across Europe.
They are also allegedly involved in drug trafficking, prostitution and the running of gambling dens.
“It is a systemic problem. Not only the production of clothing, but also storage in warehouses and the logistics of distribution,” Giovanni Santi of Prato’s chamber of commerce told La Repubblica newspaper.
Luca Tescaroli, a local prosecutor, said that the Chinese triad groups “maintain links with traditional mafia organisations” such as the ’Ndrangheta of Calabria, the Cosa Nostra in Sicily and Albanian gangs.
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