A name on the box of protective devices, another (different) in the public prosecutor’s seizure decree, a third (still different) in the IT system of the transport and storage company. This is where the puzzle of the Chinese masks that ended up in the Sda network warehouses during the Covid emergency begins. In Settala, on February 11, 2021, the Guardia di Finanza seized ten FFP3 attributed to Wenzhou Yongzheng Medical Technology and ten KN95 traced back to Wenzhou Xilian Electrical Technology. But for this latter group, an anomaly immediately appears: in the electronic archive of the forwarders, the manufacturer is registered as “Xinie”. An acronym that in fact, as the Fiamme Gialle immediately note, does not exist.
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Paolo Bruno Campanile, Sda logistics manager for the Civil Protection contract in Northern Italy, states: «The PPE manufacturer does not correspond to what is indicated in the decree», he explains, «due to a system registration error, but the number of packages, the number of pieces per package and the Air Waybill number correspond to what appears in our systems under the entry Xinie». The numbers match, the name doesn’t. The Awb, packages and quantities coincide. However, the most important question remains unanswered: where did “Xinie” come from? A typo, an abbreviation, a bad translation, a brand or another company?
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No one knows. And when the financiers ask for the consortium’s administrative documentation, it is not available. «I can presumably tell you», Campanile still emphasizes, «that the importer of the personal protective equipment is the company Wenzhou Light Industrial Product Arts & Crafts Import Export Co. Ltd. , a datum taken from the warehouse Excel sheet to which the samples seized by you correspond». That “presumably” carries weight. The company that flooded Italy with millions of (fake) masks is not identified through an invoice or a customs declaration, but through an internal Excel file of a private company. An isolated case, one might say. A mistake made in good faith, driven by the stress of deliveries in those complicated months. In reality, such a problem had already emerged a week earlier in another warehouse, at Arcese di Cesano Maderno.
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«I must clarify», Campanile always states in the report, «that on the shipping notes I handed over to you, only the name of the supplier company and the related Lta code, a unique shipment identifier, sometimes also reported as Awb, appear, but it does not report the manufacturing company of the masks in question». Therefore, the factories that physically produced the masks, choosing the fabrics and worrying about validations and quality controls, remained shrouded in a smokescreen of anonymity. To trace the company, one had to cross-reference (with a bit of luck) the shipping code, package, packaging, brand, and internal certificate. A treasure hunt, rather than a linear reading of documents that should have traced, without doubts or misinterpretations, the identity of who produced what, and who transported what to Italy.
For some orders, the financiers also discovered, there was not even a delivery note capable of unequivocally linking the supplier to the shipment. «For three of these shipments», Campanile continues, «I cannot provide you with a document that uniquely associates the supplier with the shipment. Therefore», he concludes, «I am providing you with an extrapolation in Excel format that the Civil Protection sent us». The uncertain identity of the manufacturers, moreover, was not hidden only in the warehouses and phantom delivery notes. The same crack appeared upstream, in the offices of the Commissioner’s Structure which, for a contract worth 294 million euros, had omitted to indicate in the letter of appointment the Usci, an 18-digit numerical code, in force in China, which closely resembles our VAT number. Indispensable information for any Public Administration that cared about the traceability of payments and supplies. But in Italy, at that time, anarchy reigned.
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