The court of Milan's preventive measures section on Friday put Giorgio Armani Operations SPA, the fashion group's company dealing with the design and production of clothes and accessories, into administration.
The move is linked to a criminal probe by prosecutors PaoloStorari and Luisa Baima Bollone and the Carabinieri police's labor inspectorate into alleged worker exploitation.
The allegedly exploitation regards work contracted out and carried out at allegedly illegal plants using Chinese citizens employed off the books.
Investigators said Giorgio Armani Operations SPA had been "incapable of preventing and curbing phenomena of labor exploitation within the production cycle, having not implemented suitable measures to verify the real working conditions or the technical capabilities of the contracting companies," thus facilitating "the crime of gangmastering".
They said this system had made it possible to lower production costs, not paying direct taxes, insurance and social-security contributions, not respecting workplace health-and-safety regulations, and not complying with obligations of the sector's national collective contract for pay, work hours, breaks and paid holidays.
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