Spanish police said Monday they have dismantled a criminal network suspected of smuggling mainly Yemeni migrants into Britain and Canada with fake passports.
After obtaining refugee documents in Greece, the migrants went to European airports where gang members would deliver them counterfeit passports to allow them to “irregularly” go to the two countries, police said in a statement.
The group allegedly facilitated more than 40 irregular migration attempts, charging up to 3,000 ($3,250) per person.
Police said they started investigating in September after Canada’s border agency alerted Spanish authorities to multiple cases of Yemeni nationals trying to enter from Spanish airports using forged travel documents.
Officers arrested 11 suspected gang members, including its alleged leader, in raids in northern Spain and Madrid.
Police said they traced flight bookings, money transfers, credit card payments, airport surveillance footage, and electronic travel authorisations as part of their probe into the network.
Authorities in Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and Britain helped the investigation, and the European Union’s Europol agency helped analyse data from mobile devices that were seized from the suspects.
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