Reportage

Prato, the Chinese low-cost clothing district thrives on crime

More than 4,300 companies in the city are able to produce thousands of garments within 48 hours thanks to an army of 'slaves'.

by Silvia Pieraccini

27 April 2025

5' min read

Key points

Europe's largest wholesale 'marketplace'
Tuscan companies' alarm.
The Safe Work Project

5' min read

The signs of the fire are no longer there. The warehouse in Via Toscana in the Macrolotto district of Prato, the former headquarters of the Teresa Moda company in which seven Chinese workers who lived there (in niches made out of plasterboard) and sewed clothes and T-shirts in inhuman conditions, for 14-16 hours a day, burnt to death 11 years ago, has been renovated and re-rented, although there are no signs. The Italian property owners, convicted in first and second instance (six and a half years imprisonment, later reduced to four), were acquitted of the charge of multiple manslaughter in 2019 in the Court of Cassation, a sentence that buried forever the investigative hypothesis of countering the illicit activities of the Chinese firms starting with those who rent them the production spaces without caring what happens in there.

Europe's largest wholesale 'market'

'Teresa Moda? We don't know anything,' the Chinese and Pakistani workers who work in the nearby clothing factories (the so-called 'pronto moda') answer in monosyllables, peeking out behind 'walls' of brightly coloured summer clothes ready for sale, protected by cameras at every corner. A few steps away are mountains of black sacks containing processing waste, scraps of fabric to be disposed of who knows where. All around is an incessant coming and going of cars, trucks, mopeds and above all Polish, French and Italian vans, coming to stock up on low-cost clothes in Europe's largest wholesale 'market': more than 4,300 Chinese companies that are able to produce thousands and thousands of garments within 48 hours thanks to an army of oriental 'slaves' and, in recent years, also Pakistanis, Bengalis and Indians. The Chinese low-cost clothing district seems to shine as brightly as and more than before.

At the time of Teresa Moda's burning, it was the end of 2013, Prato and Tuscany gasped: 'It is not tolerable,' they said then, 'that in a region adored by tourists and appreciated for good living, such situations of labour exploitation and tax evasion persist. Today the situation is worse than then. Because from illegality and evasion we have moved on to criminality.

'Chinese Mafia', defined the Chief Prosecutor of Prato, Luca Tescaroli, who in recent months has found himself fighting a war between armed Chinese gangs one against the other aiming to control the market of hangers, the metal hangers costing a few cents each that are essential for those who produce clothes and T-shirts. Knives, bars, bullets: fifteen violent episodes since last June and disturbing links with the murder of two Chinese men in Rome in recent days and the burning down of a Chinese clothes warehouse near Madrid, Spain, at the end of February. The response is frightening: international organisations with links to other criminal realities such as 'ndrangheta, camorra, Sacra Corona unita. 'Until now, the risks of Chinese crime have not been perceived,' Tescaroli told Il Sole 24 Ore, 'now we need an awareness on the part of institutions and citizens because the acts of violence that are increasing are a danger and annihilate economic competition'.

The fight against the 'Chinese mafia'

Just as the local mafia was defeated thanks (above all) to repentants, so Chinese crime can be attacked by extending the same measures of assistance and extraordinary protection to collaborators and witnesses of justice, claims the prosecutor: 'Since 6 February, when I made an appeal inviting exploited people to turn to the judicial authorities, 52 Chinese and Pakistani people have turned up at the Prosecutor's Office,' Tescaroli announces, adding that 'this has never happened in the past'. This may be the sign of a turning point, but it now needs 'political will and legislative intervention'. Also to safeguard the city's healthy economy: 'Chinese evasion conditions free competition, no one can compete with those who exploit workers in an inhuman way'.

Riccardo Marini, a textile entrepreneur and former president of Confindustria Prato (now merged into Confindustria Toscana Nord) from 2008 to 2011, who has been one of the strongest voices against Chinese illegality, is bitter: 'The latest facts are shocking,' he explains while at work in his company in Montemurlo, 'instead of moving forward, Prato is going backwards. Fifteen years ago I called for intervention by the authorities, but that intervention did not happen. Today we find ourselves with a devastated image of the city, precisely we who sell our fabrics to the world and have relations with foreign customers'.

The alarm of Tuscan enterprises

Over the past few days, Confindustria Toscana Nord (Confederation of Italian Industry) has issued a harsh note denouncing the paradox of a historic textile district, a leader in Europe in the production of yarns and fabrics, which is doing somersaults to raise quality and sustainability and which finds itself besmirched by the illegality and criminal acts of the 'other' district, the young Chinese district that produces low-cost clothes. "Two contiguous sectors, textiles and clothing, sometimes confused by the public, are not at all alike in their relationship with legality," the industrialists point out.

"We need a strong political will to intervene," explains Fabia Romagnoli, president-designate of Confindustria Toscana nord, "but before setting any strategy, we need to recognise the exceptional nature of the migratory phenomena in Prato. Almost 50 thousand Chinese estimated, of which at least 15 thousand are illegal immigrants, 5 thousand Chinese companies, 85% of which are engaged in low-cost clothing and 85% in the form of sole proprietorships that can be closed and reopened within a day, to escape controls and sanctions. "We need to break down the wall of omertà that still surrounds the Chinese community, the road is long but it must be travelled," says the mayor of the PD Ilaria Bugetti, reiterating the request to strengthen the staff of the Prefecture, Police Headquarters, Carabinieri and Labour Inspectorate. "When it comes to the Mafia, the interlocutors must be the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Government," adds Bugetti, "even if the work of relations done over the years by the Municipality with the Chinese associations in the area must continue. No word came from the Chinese consulate in Florence after the bloody events.

The Safe Work Project

Bugetti applauds the Lavoro Sicuro (Safe Work) project launched by the Region of Tuscany immediately after the Teresa Moda fire, which led regional inspectors to make more than 11,000 visits to Chinese firms in Prato in ten years to dismantle dormitories and illegal kitchens and check machinery and electrical systems. 'We went from an irregularity level of 70 per cent to 20 per cent,' underlines Bugetti. But that project has been unable to do anything against the exploitation of workers, tax evasion and crime, areas over which other bodies have jurisdiction.

On these grounds, the hypothesis of being able to check all the Chinese companies in Prato today seems titanic. No one even knows how many there really are, since the Chamber of Commerce has discontinued its periodic survey on Chinese entrepreneurship. And the creation of a single database on Chinese companies, fed by all institutions and police forces, remains a taboo after 25 years of illegality. "Perhaps the economic mechanism has not been well understood," concludes Prosecutor Tescaroli, "the Chinese import billions of euro worth of fabrics, which arrive in European and Italian ports evading customs taxes; they process them with open-and-shut firms that exploit the workers at costs that are unfeasible for the legal market; and they repatriate the resources through cryptocurrencies. We need to take corrective action'.