Ladnun, India and Padua, Italy – When Sandeep migrated from India’s Rajasthan state to Italy in 2009, he was fulfilling a long-held dream of relocating overseas for a better life.
But in late 2015, the 42-year-old graduate suddenly lost his job, putting him at imminent risk of losing his residency permit in Italy.
Desperate for work, Sandeep was relieved when an acquaintance told him about a “friend” who was well-known among the Indian community in Italy for procuring jobs in exchange for a fee, he said.
After forking over a 5,000-euro placement fee, Sandeep accepted a job offer with a logistics cooperative that works with major Italian food retail companies, he said, only to find himself subject to conditions that resembled forced labour.
Sandeep’s supervisors would demand he work 11-12 hours a day, seven days a week, and refused to provide sick leave or an employment contract lasting beyond a few months, he said.
When he was not working, Sandeep shared a two-room apartment with 10 other people in the northern city of Padua, at the cost of 330 euros per month, he said.
Still, Sandeep said he dared not complain about his situation.
“I needed my contract to be renewed, otherwise I would have become an illegal migrant in Italy, thus I accepted every condition they imposed on me,” Sandeep, who requested to use a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera.
Sandeep’s story is not unique.
From 2012 to August 2022, hundreds of Indian citizens paid up to 20,000 euros each to Tara Chand Tanwar, an Indian citizen from Sujangarh, Rajasthan, to take up jobs in Italy, where they were subjected to exploitative working and living conditions, a two-year investigation by Al Jazeera and Italian magazine Lavialibera has found.
Al Jazeera and Lavialibera interviewed 32 people, including 14 workers, and examined court documents and business records to show how Tanwar was able to exploit weaknesses in Italy’s migration and procurement laws to implement a system of bribery, blackmail, threats and violence designed to keep workers trapped in dire conditions.
Tanwar, also known as Taru, left his hometown in 1994 after securing a contract to work as a domestic worker in Lecce, a city in southern Italy’s Apulia region.
In 2005, he moved to the city of Campodarsego, near Padua, where he began providing a workforce for the logistics sector in the northern part of the country.
For 10 years, Tanwar “created a regime of terror” by running “a criminal organisation that used methods bordering on mafia tactics”, Domenica Gambardella, a judge for preliminary investigations in Padua, wrote in a court order dated August 3, 2022.
Tanwar had “a monopoly in managing migration from Rajasthan” and exploited workers through “a system of power established through intimidation and violence”, Gambardella wrote.
In his ruling, Gambardella prohibited Tanwar from engaging in professional or entrepreneurial activities for one year and ordered the seizure of assets worth 750,000 euros.
Italian judicial police estimate that 8.7 million euros flowed through 53 bank accounts linked to Tanwar over a decade.
On July 12, 2024, the public prosecutor of the Court of Padua, Marco Brusegan, informed Tanwar that preliminary investigations against him were concluded and sufficient evidence had been gathered to request his indictment.
The notice granted Tanwar 20 days to submit evidence to a judge should he wish to argue that he should not face trial on charges that have not been publicly disclosed.
It is not clear if Tanwar made any submission to the court, which will ultimately decide if the indictment proceeds.
Tanwar’s lawyer declined to comment.
Although Rajasthan is one of India’s wealthiest regions, its unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent and migration to more developed economies, including Italy, is common.
In northern cities such as Ladnun and Sujangarh, some neighbourhoods have gained the nickname “Little Italy” because almost every family has a relative who is sending money back home from the European country.
The homes of the most successful expatriates can be easily spotted due to their size and newer construction. Tanwar’s house in Ladnun is a red-brick double mansion.
Residents of Sujangarh and Ladnun said that Tanwar had since 2012 become a reference point for people wanting to migrate to Italy, preparing all the needed documents for a fee.
To operate legally, agents like Tanwar must register with India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and obtain a licence to recruit workers for roles abroad.
Tanwar, however, never held such a licence, according to the MEA’s list of registered agents.
Workers recruited by Tanwar said they were not aware of the rules, or that their recruiter was not registered with the authorities.
Tanwar provided workers with plane tickets, residence permits and contracts, in some cases offering the option of paying his fees in instalments for convenience’s sake, workers he recruited said.
Tanwar would then require his recruits to stay in apartments he owned until their debts were settled, charging them between 300 and 380 euros in monthly rent, which included meals, they said.
At least eight people would share an apartment with a single bathroom, they said, with some dwellings lacking closets and even beds, leaving workers to sleep on mattresses on the floor.
Most of the workers recruited by Tanwar said they were assigned to a warehouse in Belfiore, a commune about 60km (37 miles) from Padua, which has become a distribution hub for large food retailers in northern Italy.
All of them said they had been employed by one of five cooperatives – Lavoro e Progresso coop, East West Trading srl, Mg Service coop, Sky Coop, and Comservice Soc Coop – which supplied their services to large food retailers including Unicomm, Aspiag and Maxi Di.
According to business records obtained by Al Jazeera, Tanwar founded and owned both Lavoro e Progresso and East West Trading.
Business records indicate that the cooperatives established by Tanwar are still active even though he handed over his role as CEO to another Indian national.
The five cooperatives, as well as Unicomm, Aspiag and Maxi Di, did not respond to requests for comment.
“The food provided to the apartment was insufficient. To avoid starvation, we had to buy extra food with our money,” said Farid, a worker who lived in one of Tanwar’s apartments in Padua while working in Belfiore.
Amir, another migrant worker who was assigned to the warehouse in Belfiore, said that he and his brother agreed to pay Tanwar 10,000 euros to migrate to Italy.
“Part of the sum was covered by my mother selling a piece of land. The remaining part was paid gradually when we started working in Italy. However, then Taru asked for more money than the 10,000 euros we initially agreed upon,” said Amir, who is from Ladnun.
Amir’s mother said that Tanwar tried to intimidate the family after they refused to pay.
“One night, he sent about 10 men to frighten me. On another occasion, his associates assaulted one of my sons. The day after, I went to the police,” she said.
A police officer at the Ladnun police station confirmed that Tanwar was charged with attempting to commit an offence and kidnapping in 2018.
However, Amir’s mother last year agreed to have the charges dropped after reaching an agreement with Taru, a common practice in India. She declined to specify if she reached a financial settlement or another kind of agreement.
Amir’s family is not the only one to have accused Taru of violence.
“If you don’t comply with his rules, it’s over. There’s substantial evidence against him, yet he remains at large. No one wants to press charges against him out of fear. He is like the mafia,” said Sunil, another worker recruited by Taru.
From his two-room apartment in Padua, Sunil recalled being threatened when he refused to obey Taru’s orders.
“Once, he even slapped me in the face,” Sunil said.
Italian court documents obtained by Al Jazeera and Lavialibera show that Taru boasted about his relationships with politicians and law enforcement in India during intercepted phone conversations with associates back home.
The wall of silence around Taru finally broke in 2018 when a Belfiore warehouse worker reported him to authorities.
According to documents filed in the Court of Verona, the worker accused Taru of “systematically taking money in exchange for a job”, forcing workers to live in his apartments and threatening migrant workers with the loss of their residence permits if they did not meet certain targets.
“One of our trade union’s delegates was attacked by unidentified assailants in 2018 after workers began to expose conditions inside the Belfiore warehouse,” said Teo Molin Fop, a representative of the Italian grassroots union Adl Cobas.
“During those years, the atmosphere of fear surrounding Taru was palpable,” Fop said.
Interviews with migrant workers suggest that exploitation in the logistics sector goes far beyond one man and is widespread.
Migrant workers “are particularly vulnerable to exploitation in the logistics sector,” said Massimo Pedretti, a trade unionist from the Union of Basic Trade Unions.
“It is an unreported and subtle kind of exploitation that remains pervasive and tolerated due to its economic functionality,” Pedretti said.
According to dozens of investigations by Italian authorities, exploitation affects thousands of migrant workers in every region of the country.
The sector, pivotal in the global economy, generates an estimated 80 billion euros annually in Italy alone, according to the Italian Ministry of Labour.
Since 2003, when a new law weakened protections for workers, the logistics sector has heavily relied on subcontracting, allowing large cooperatives to tap into a large pool of flexible labour without needing to hire permanent workers.
“The primary motivation is cost savings on taxes and minimal responsibilities towards workers. Contracting and subcontracting firms cannot be held accountable if workers are exploited by the contracted or subcontracted companies,” Pedretti said.
Recent investigations by Milan prosecutor Paolo Storari into Bartolini and Geodis, two French state-owned logistics giants, highlighted the use of contracts and subcontracts to circumvent direct hiring obligations, thereby reducing their tax burden.
Storari said that these practices reflect a deliberate business strategy rather than isolated incidents.
Bartolini did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
Geodis said it had “settled the tax dispute which was the core of the prosecutor’s investigation, without any admission of liability”.
“The Group is now in the process of assessing potential social security indirect liabilities that may arise from the actions of independent subcontractors, which are not and were not at any time under its control,” a company spokesperson said.
Despite attracting the scrutiny of authorities, Bartolini and Geodis’s practices “remain legal according to Italian laws,” Pedretti said.
Pedretti recounted the experiences of warehouse workers who were employed between 2008 and 2019 by a cooperative supplying fashion brand Zara in Rome and Milan.
“Workers, predominantly Egyptians, were subjected to exploitation and coercion by people from their own country. Those who did not accept certain conditions faced threats to their families back home,” Pedretti said.
Zara declined a request to comment.
In May, in a separate case, the Court of Modena issued arrest warrants for 18 Pakistani nationals alleged to have been involved in a criminal organisation accused of extortion, assault, threats and money laundering.
They were alleged to have recruited migrant workers for a Modena branch of SDA, a prominent logistics company which is part of Poste Italiane, the national postal services provider.
In response to inquiries, Poste Italiane said: “The value of our contracts with the alleged cooperative is extremely small compared to the volume of our supplies. Additionally, the documentation submitted by the cooperative to compete for our supply services was in order.”
Migration experts say that Italian law leaves migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation.
Foreigners seeking to enter Italy legally have three options: a tourist visa, a student visa, or a work permit governed by an Italian annual decree that establishes how many foreign workers can come to Italy, from which country, and in which sector they can be employed.
Work visa applications can only be submitted during a certain period of the year and are valid for between 20 days and nine months.
Amended by a far-right political party in 1992, the law requires Italian employers to submit the personal details of any worker they wish to hire to the government before they can enter the country.
The requirement for prospective migrants to apply from overseas has spurred an industry of agents who will take care of applications in their home countries.
Luca Di Sciullo, the head of the migration-focused Idos Study and Research Center, described the system as “absurd”.
“No one will ever employ a worker they have never met. Such a system makes intermediation inevitable and mediators can charge willing workers thousands of euros. Furthermore, it gives both the employers and the agents enormous blackmail power because these entries are on short-term contracts. Once they are over, the foreign national becomes irregular”, Di Sciullo said.
In June, just before the European elections, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made a criminal complaint to the Italian national anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, in relation to the exploitation of migrant workers.
Calling for greater oversight by the authorities, Meloni said the law had been exploited by organised crime to facilitate irregular immigration in exchange for large sums of money.
“However, her government has done nothing to improve the situation and plans to worsen it,” the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (Asgi), a lawyers’ organisation that defends migrants’ rights, said in a statement.
“The simplest solution would be allowing migrants to obtain a visa to seek work in Italy. We have been asking politicians to make this change for 20 years,” the organisation said.
However, Italian governments, from across the ideological spectrum have so far shown little appetite to change the law.
Apart from Taru, dozens of intermediaries are working to take advantage of poor Indians’ aspirations to move to Italy, according to former and prospective migrant workers.
But the victims of such agents face hurdles to speaking out, according to Amrita Choudhari, the head nongovernmental organisation Disha Shekhawati, who has supported prospective migrants in Ladnun and Sujangarh
“Few victims speak out against agents due to community ties and their influential power,” Choudhari said.
This investigation was supported by the Journalismfund Europe’s Modern Slavery Unveiled grant programme. Workers’ names have been changed to protect identities.