By Silvia Ognibene , Emilio Parodi and Crispian Balmer
PRATO, Italy, April 21 (Reuters) – China’s formal reply to an Italian request for mutual legal assistance never made it past a Rome mailroom.
The documents, relating to the attempted murder of a Chinese businessman in Italy in 2024, arrived at the Justice Ministry in Rome in early February via the ordinary postal service as is often the case, requiring a payment-on-delivery charge.
No one in the ministry’s postal office knew the package was coming, so staff refused to pay, sending the envelope back to China unopened, said two people with knowledge of the blunder.
After the error was revealed, the Justice Ministry asked Chinese authorities to resend the material, but the documents have still not been received, one of the sources said.
The embarrassing episode reflects a wider sense of mistrust and paralysis within Italy surrounding Beijing’s efforts to provide cooperation with Rome. The impasse is frustrating some prosecutors who say it is hindering their fight against Chinese gangs running multi-billion-euro crime rackets in Italy.
Over the past decade Italian prosecutors have opened dozens of investigations into illicit banking, drug rings, extortion, labour abuses, illegal immigration, tax evasion, murder and mob warfare within the Chinese diaspora in Italy.
Only a few cases have made it through the courts.
Investigators say they need help from Beijing to penetrate gangs that work in tandem with counterparts in China, but securing such collaboration is meeting resistance at home.
That wariness is a product of tensions between different branches of Italian law enforcement, and also reflects wider concerns over cybersecurity incidents involving China, with political ties having cooled during Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s four years in power.
CHINESE CRIME BUSTERS COME TO ITALY
An initial move towards cooperation came from Beijing.
On September 24, 2025, Chinese authorities wrote to Luca Tescaroli, the chief prosecutor in the Tuscan city of Prato — home to one of Italy’s largest Chinese communities and the epicentre of an alleged Chinese crime network accused of trying to control lucrative fast-fashion logistics across Europe.
They proposed a meeting and dispatched a high-level delegation — including a senior police officer and officials from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security — to Prato on November 25, 2025.
“This readiness to cooperate was an epoch-making development,” Tescaroli told Reuters.
But there has been no follow-up meeting, as resistance within different Italian law-enforcement agencies has put a brake on efforts to cultivate the channel, three senior sources within judicial and public security bodies told Reuters.
One judicial source said there was concern in Rome that the cooperation offered by China focused on violent crime and did not extend to the numerous probes being conducted by prosecutors in Milan, Brescia, Florence and Rome into vast money-laundering operations run through so-called Chinese “underground banks”.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said China was willing to strengthen law-enforcement cooperation with Italy to tackle transnational crime. The Chinese consulate in Florence said China “naturally cooperates with all countries” to combat criminal activity and protect the Chinese community’s rights.
Italy’s national anti-mafia prosecutor, Barbara Sargenti, who coordinates investigations at home and abroad, said there was still no agreement on how best to proceed.
“There have been, and there continue to be, discussions through the Ministry of Justice. The question is whether there is both the possibility and the benefit, for both sides, of continuing along this path,” she told Reuters.
CYBERSECURITY HACK ADDS TO ITALIAN WARINESS
At last November’s meeting in Prato, a judicial source said the Chinese delegation provided the names of masterminds behind the 2024 attempted murder in the city.
Tescaroli’s office prepared a statement to mark the encounter, but it was never released.
A Rome-based judicial source said the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office had been unhappy about the initiative, arguing that a local prosecutor’s office should not have a direct channel with the Chinese police.
Tescaroli acknowledged disagreements between Italy’s independent prosecutors and state-controlled security, such as the police, over how to manage contacts with Beijing.
“There are differing views between the political world and the judiciary,” he said. “We are trying to move the cooperation forward and have frequent contacts. This is an opportunity.”
One senior police official said Italian police were proceeding cautiously. “We’re sniffing each other out,” the official said, adding that China was not a partner comparable to Italy’s European allies and required special care.
Cybersecurity concerns have complicated ties.
Italian police said in February that cyberattacks originating from China had targeted the Interior Ministry, seeking to locate Chinese dissidents and identify officers investigating Chinese crime groups.
Police said the attempts were thwarted and no sensitive data was taken. China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing actively opposed hacking and rejected “disinformation” on the issue.
HELP WITH TRANSLATION
European officials meanwhile have encouraged cooperation and China has pressed for a more stable channel via European institutions, the judicial sources said.
Eurojust, the European Union body that facilitates cross-border collaboration, said it was cooperating with Italy and China on one undisclosed case.
In another case late last year, Chinese authorities sought, via European channels, to send investigators to Florence and access files in an anti-mafia probe, the judicial sources said.
Prosecutors in Florence and the anti-mafia directorate refused, saying the material was covered by investigative secrecy, the sources said.
At present, the only concrete, direct assistance track between Italy and China is in Prato.
Tescaroli said after the November meeting, the Chinese embassy had provided an interpreter to translate documents – a badly needed service previously hard to secure.
“The fact is that China has offered to cooperate. Of course, we shouldn’t accept it blindly, but we can’t reject this opportunity out of hand,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing. Emilio Parodi reported for this story from RomeEditing by Keith Weir)
Comments