Italian brothers arrested for exploiting refugee laborers

Two Italian brothers have been arrested for exploiting refugee labor and paying them different amounts based on the color of their skin, Carabinieri military police announced Friday.

The brothers aged 41 and 48 are accused of illegally recruiting refugees to pick produce on their farm in the southern Calabria region on the tip of Italy's boot, paying them 25 euros a day if they were black and 35 euros a day if they were not black, local media quoted Carabinieri police as saying.

"Operation in Cosenza province against exploitation of refugees: two arrests made," the Carabinieri official account tweeted.

An online paper called Qui Cosenza posted a Carabinieri video showing Africans bent over in the fields, picking produce.

Carabinieri Captain Giordano Tognoni told local reporters that the suspects, one of whom is the owner of the farm, employed five to ten laborers a day.

The brothers picked the refugees up near a refugee reception center, paying them different amounts based on the color of their skin, forcing them to work in substandard conditions, and threatening them with deportation, Tognoni reportedly said.

The investigation did not turn up any evidence that the refugee reception center colluded in the exploitation, the captain told reporters.

The refugees being exploited by the brothers hailed from Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Senegal.

The brothers face charges of illegal labor intermediation and exploitation, aggravated by racial discrimination. Prosecutors also seized property and assets worth 2 millon euros (2.4 million U.S. dollars), ANSA news agency and RAI public broadcaster reported.

The government in October 2016 passed a law criminalizing the practice of exploiting undocumented workers in the fields, known as gangmastering. This offence is now punishable with up to six years in prison, according to the Official Gazette.