Jakarta Globe, November 09, 2012
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Rome.
Italian police seized 163 million euros’ ($207 million) worth of assets from a
criminal association headquartered in Switzerland on Thursday, as well as a
luxury villa used as a safehouse for stashing gold, police said.
Officers
carried out 259 raids in houses and cash -for -gold shops across Italy as part
of an investigation into 118 people suspected of smuggling gold bars to
Switzerland and cash back into Italy.
The gang is
accused of money-laundering, recycling cash and stolen jewels through cash -for
-gold shops and churning out lingots in foundries.
“The money
came illegally into Italy from Switzerland, and was used to buy fraudulently
obtained gold and silver, then sent back to Switzerland in the form of
lingots,” police officer Alessandro Langella told AFP.
Police
seized a villa in Monte San Savino, a town near the city of Arezzo, the gold
capital of Italy. Nick -named “Fort Knox”, the villa was used by the criminal
gang as a place to stash the cash and lingots.
They also
blocked 500 bank accounts, seizing 163 million euros worth of profit earned by
the gang in 2012 through the exchange of 4,500 kilograms (9,920 pounds) of gold
and 11,000 kilograms of silver.
In August,
Italian police announced a 78 percent jump in the amount of gold, silver and
cash they had prevented from leaving the country illegally in the first seven
months of 2012.
The
financial police said it had seized 41 million euros’ worth compared with 23.2
million euros in the same period last year.
Criminal
organizations in Italy have been making billions from a boom in the
poorly-regulated cash-for-gold sector, which is rife with tax evasion and
serves as a quick and easy method of cleaning dirty money.
Out of an
estimated 28,000 cash-for-gold stores in Italy, only a few hundred have
registered with the Bank of Italy and professional associations say that some
80 percent of the gold sold there ultimately ends up in Switzerland.
Agence France-Presse
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