Milano: the Police arrested two Peruvian citizens residing in the city for extortion
A 37-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman were arrested.
Milano: the Police arrested two Peruvian citizens residing in the city for extortion.
The investigation conducted by the agents of the Monforte Vittoria police station made it possible to delve deeper into the activity carried out within the Peruvian community with the council: a form of solidarity loan, with a pinch of gambling, through which ten, fifteen or even twenty people come together with the aim of lending each other money; one of them plays the role of cashier and the others usually participate with a share each around 500 euros each, which are paid monthly for a duration that can vary from 12 to 15 months.
The banker, the one who chairs the junta (which can be translated into Italian as session, council, council) has the possibility of managing a large monthly amount of money, which he uses for his own project, and guarantees the invested capital at the end of the "contract". by the participants. Not only that, every month the council meets and here the junta is colored with a pinch of chance: the gathered participants, each without the knowledge of the others, decide there how much to actually pay and write it on a ticket. Once the tickets have been counted, whoever has paid the highest amount wins the prize of the month.
Ten participants, twelve months and 500 euros per month each they would guarantee the banker a cash availability of 60 thousand euros per year.
However, the participants gathered monthly do not always pay the 500 euro fee, on the contrary.
To give a pinch of risk to what would only be a form of solidarity loan between compatriots, they decide to secretly pay a sum ranging from zero to 500 euros.
There are those who decide to bet 300, some 400, some 250 euros and whoever bets more wins the monthly stake that the banker must immediately pay to the winner, who, having taken his capital, will still have to pay his share of 500 euros for the entire duration of the junta. The advantage lies in trying to bet as low as possible compared to the others because the remaining difference will be shared among the other participants.
This is a practice imported directly from Peru, born within families, guaranteed by kinship relationships thanks to which debts are always paid, a practice which in Peru seems consolidated but which, abroad, sees the "family" become composed of compatriots who are not necessarily relatives with relationships of guarantee which are diluted and which do not guarantee the stability of the junta carried out in Peru.
In fact, the game enters into crisis when the participants do not pay, and by not paying they put the banker in crisis who, to cover the junta, is forced to cover the shortfalls with his own resources risking being dragged, by the board, into a whirlpool of debts contracted at stellar usury rates by other compatriots: a debt of 13 thousand euros becomes 25 thousand in the space of a few months thanks to interest of 10-15% monthly.
This is the context in which the agents of the Monforte Vittoria police station found themselves operating after having collected the complaint of a couple of Peruvian origin, who, having decided to create a junta to finance a commercial activity in 2022, ended up the victim of a scam of stranglehold loans between Italy and Peru which he was unable to cope with, not even with the help of his family members from his native country, who were themselves indebted, becoming the victim of initially veiled and indirect threats, carried out in a calm manner, then aggressively with calls from Peru where they say “the world is small” and “I have relatives in Milano".
During the complaint, the victims told the police that some of their compatriots had set up a meeting to collect two thousand euros and the police decided to show up for the meeting, catching the exchange of money red-handed and arresting a couple of Peruvian citizens for extortion, starting from here to dig into the meshes of this dense network of usury, connivance, silence and phantom and illegal economic practices.
They are found at the home of the two arrested men then 9 thousand euros in cash, hidden well in the house and packaged with care, and notes with lists of names and loan percentages.
Thus another cross-section of illegality emerges which the investigations of the State Police will have to lead to clarifying the actual dimensions of the phenomenon and the concrete danger of those who carry out these practices.
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