MILAN (Reuters) -Italian prosecutors said on Tuesday they had dismantled a Syrian-led network accused of laundering drug-trafficking proceeds in Italy and France by converting cash into gold bars.
The Guardia di Finanza police arrested five people in the northern regions of Piedmont and Lombardy and seized 17 million euros ($20 million), Milan prosecutors said in a statement.
The investigation was conducted by a joint team including Italy’s tax police and the French national gendarmerie in Marseille, coordinated by the Italian national anti-mafia directorate and the Marseille prosecutor’s office, along with Eurojust and Europol.
Over 10 months, the suspects collected more than 17 million euros in drug proceeds, largely in France, and transported the cash in vehicles with hidden compartments to an area around Alessandria in the Piedmont region that borders France, prosecutors said.
“There, with the complicity of three precious-metal smelting businesses in Piedmont and Lombardy, the cash was converted into gold bars and sheets with a matching value,” the statement said.
The gold was then moved to Kosovo, North Macedonia, Turkey and Morocco.
“It is the first time investigators have been able to reconstruct the flow of drug money generated abroad and then converted into gold — a growing safe-haven asset that is easier to transport,” the statement added.
It said it had identified a wide network of Syrian nationals involved in the process.
Milan prosecutors said the French gendarmerie was simultaneously carrying out further arrests of suspects involved in collecting drug proceeds in France.
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(Reporting by Emilio Parodi, editing by Keith Weir and Timothy Heritage)
