(ANSA) - MILANO, JUL 6 - Officers from the Milan Provincial Command and the Central Investigation Service for Organized Crime, acting on behalf of the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office—DDA, executed an asset seizure order in Kosovo for assets with a total value of approximately 1 million euros. The investigation, conducted in collaboration with the National Gendarmerie—Analysis and Research Section in Marseille, and coordinated by Eurojust and Europol, is linked to a previous operation in September 2025, when assets and cash totaling over 30 million euros were seized, traceable to a transnational criminal group involved in laundering proceeds from drug trafficking on French territory. The seizure of assets in Kosovo resulted from asset investigations and an analysis of the seized documentation, which made it possible to determine the balances of bank accounts, business assets, real estate, and luxury cars held abroad by a couple of Kosovar citizens residing in the province of Alessandria, who were already under investigation in Italy for money laundering and were arrested last September in France after being found in possession of over 50 kilograms of gold bars hidden in the false bottom of a car. In particular, the investigation established that the drug proceeds collected in France—amounting to no less than 18 million euros over the 10-month period under investigation— once brought to the couple's home in the Alessandria area, was converted into gold bars and sheets of corresponding value with the complicity of individuals working in the precious metals smelting and processing sector located between Lombardy and Piedmont. The investigations by the GdF, coordinated by the DDA, thus made it possible to reconstruct the modus operandi adopted by the suspects, who, after obtaining the money—proceeds from international drug trafficking—proceeded to convert it into gold bars in an attempt to obscure its origin and facilitate its transport to Kosovo, Turkey, and Morocco. (ANSA).