ROME: Italian law enforcement has busted a 14-member people and tobacco smuggling ring that ran high-speed vessels carrying migrants and cigarettes from Tunisia to Sicily, Finance Police announced.
“Criminal association dedicated to the exploitation of illegal immigration (and) tobacco smuggling dismantled,” the Finance Police tweeted. “14 arrests made, assets worth over 3 million euros (3.4 million U.S. dollars) seized.”
The gang was made up of Italians and Tunisians and was headed by a Tunisian national who “organized multiple transports by sea over the past two years, reinvesting large sums of illicitly gained money in the purchase of a farm, a shipyard and a luxury waterfront restaurant” in Sicily, the Finance Police said in a statement.
The gang ferried 10-15 migrants from Tunisia to Sicily per trip, charging them 3,000 euros per capita for the crossing, according to the statement.
The ringleader was known to police because he was arrested in 2012 for drug and arms trafficking, and had been plotting to blow up a Carabinieri military police station with dynamite, Italian news agency ANSA reported, citing wiretaps in which the suspect described his plan to set the explosives.
The investigation — codenamed Black Beard after the gang leader’s thick black beard — uncovered “the illegal entry into Italy of several non-EU citizens, some of whom were provided with fake work contracts, as well as seven trips in which the crime ring smuggled several tons of cigarettes into the country, making illicit profits of hundreds of thousands of euros,” the statement said.
