Europol highlights vast criminal networks behind migration crisis

Europol highlights vast criminal networks behind migration crisis

Tony Barber in London

Terror groups 'using migrant routes': Warning of 'increased risk' after Interpol report says extremists are making 'opportunistic use' of smuggling networks and 800,000 people are waiting to flee Libya 

Europol report showed the criminals' turnover could even total up £5bn. 
They laundered cash across borders and ran proceeds through businesses. The report also identified 250 smuggling 'hotspots' along migrant routes.

EUROPEAN GENOCIDE

The smuggling of migrants into Europe is a rapidly expanding, multi-billion-euro business that involves more than 40,000 people in loose criminal networks, according to the EU’s law enforcement agency.

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More than 90 per cent of the more than 1m irregular migrants who surged into Europe last year had used services provided by criminal networks and their associates, said Europol this week. The agency’s report underlines the challenge EU governments face in trying to reduce the bloc’s refugee and migrant crisis to manageable proportions.

However, the report, “Migrant Smuggling in the EU”, draws a clear distinction between the migration crisis and terrorism on European soil. It says that despite some isolated cases in which suspected terrorists have used migrant routes to enter Europe, “members of terrorist groups or returning foreign fighters with EU nationality . . . typically do not rely on the facilitation services offered by migrant smuggling networks”.

Europol describes a rich range of criminal activities that have grown up around the migration crisis, including forgery of documents, corruption of law enforcement officers, sexual exploitation of unaccompanied minors and forced labour to make migrants pay off debts to smuggling networks.

“In 2015 alone, criminal networks involved in migrant smuggling are estimated to have had a turnover of between €3bn and €6bn. This turnover is set to double or triple if the scale of the current migration crisis persists in the upcoming year,” the report says. “Migrant smuggling is a highly profitable business. In most cases, migrant smuggling services require limited investment by the networks involved and are in persistent high demand.”

Europol says it holds intelligence on more than 40,000 people suspected of involvement in smuggling migrants. The suspects come from more than 100 countries, but their most common nationalities or places of birth are Bulgaria, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Kosovo, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.

Criminal gangs organize human trafficking : >


In depth - Europe’s migration crisis

A migrant family walk toward the border after arriving at the railway station of Botovo, near the Croatian-Hungarian border, on September 21, 2015. Hungary has emerged this year as a "frontline" state in Europe's migrant crisis, with 225,000 travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans and entering the country from Serbia and most recently Croatia. Last week Hungary sealed its southern border with Serbia, forcing tens of thousands of migrants to enter Croatia, from where many then again crossed into Hungary and headed for Austria and beyond. AFP PHOTO / STRINGER

The EU is struggling to respond to a surge of desperate migrants that has resulted in thousands of deaths

Some 44 per cent of smuggling networks consist of non-EU nationals, 30 per cent consist of EU nationals only and 26 per cent are mixed, the report says. Europol has identified more than 230 locations, in and outside the EU, where migrant-smuggling or activities that assist it take place. The top 11 hotspots for migrant-smuggling outside the EU are in north Africa, the Middle East and Turkey — Amman, Algiers, Beirut, Benghazi, Cairo, Casablanca, Istanbul, Izmir, Misurata, Oran and Tripoli.

The main European cities where migrants are helped to move to other EU destinations include Athens, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Thessaloniki, Vienna and Warsaw.

Although most migrants arrive by land or sea, Europol predicts that migrant smuggling by air will increase. Though it is a more expensive form of travel that depends on fraudulent documents, it is seen as safer and offering high chances of success, Europol says.

Bosses of criminal networks tend to operate remotely, maintaining contact with a limited number of local cell members, according to Europol. The cells’ tasks include buying or renting vehicles, recruiting drivers and boat crews, collecting and transferring money from migrants, arranging counterfeit documents and making contact with would-be migrants on social media.

Europol quotes from the social media page of one trafficker: “The cost of a package with travel from Turkey to Libya by air and onward sea journey from Libya to Italy costs $3,700. For the sea journey adults cost $1,000. Three children cost $500.”

$3bn-$6bn

Estimated 2015 turnover of criminal networks involved in migrant smuggling

The report says counterfeiting of documents increased significantly in 2015. “The false documents used by irregular migrants originate mainly in Athens, Istanbul and Syria as well as Asian hubs such as Thailand,” it says.

A police investigation in Albania led to the discovery of a counterfeiting print shop with the latest equipment worth millions of dollars. Having received orders from smuggling networks in Bulgaria and Turkey, the suspect who ran the shop forwarded false documents via small parcels and couriers to irregular migrants in Greece, enabling them to travel on inside the EU.

Highlighting forced labor among migrants, Europol says police uncovered a Pakistani criminal network that smuggled Pakistani migrants to the EU, where they were forced to work in restaurants owned by members of the network in Spain.

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The Mastermind behind the Mass Invasion of Europe : >


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Commentary:

"There is an elitist master plan created by Illuminati to destroy Europe’s borders and old culture ethnically, religiously, economically for the purpose of a one-world government (NWO). Order out of chaos is the motto of the Masonic spirits behind it."

Unless the borders are closed without further delay, the increasing mass invasion will end with European genocide.

Administrator
THE OTIUM POST