Italian economy has rapidly gone awry in the past few years, but, as The Associated Press reports, part of the Asian country's business community was booming, and it was found that there had been billions of euros in a massive Italy-China money laundering investigation - one that almost didn't happen due to Beijing's complete lack of cooperation.
A multi-billion Italy-China money laundering ring has been under Italian scope for the past four years, in a corruption case that ties to a local government as well as one of the biggest banks in China and the world, but it isn't until now that it's becoming transparent for the rest of the world.
According to International Business Times, the European country has been investigating this Italy-China money laundering case for the past four years, finding evidence of the illegal transfer of €4.5 billion ($4.9 billion) coming from criminal activity - but, upon asking authorities in the Asian country for cooperation, it was refused.
While there's little novelty in the existence of Italy-China money laundering (in the past four years, there have been at least two major raids arresting dozens of people involved in the practice, the latest last December, according to Reuters), this might be the first time where it's reported that the Chinese government has chosen to turn a left ear at the situation.
About half of the entire billionaire Italy-China money laundering sum was funneled through Bank of China, a state-run bank that's also one of the biggest in the Asian country - and it appears there are also a handful of Chinese companies that also benefitted from the transfers.
Italian economy has been suffering for the past few years, following a string of recessions, and the ultimate issue with the money-laundering is how there was no tax return from the billions of euros being moved around from one country to the other in the Italy-China money laundering case.
