Agents of the National Police, in a joint operation with the Civil Guard, have dismantled a criminal organization based in Gran Canaria and allegedly providing migrants with false documentation to travel to the peninsula or other States of the European Union.
Among the migrant users of this network, numerous minors were detected to whom the members of this organization provided falsified documentation where they appeared as adults, thus managing these and thanks to the logistics provided by this criminal network, to escape from the juvenile center where they were staying and enroll in a flight.
A total of seven people have been arrested - six in Gran Canaria and one in Ciudad Real - and are charged with the alleged crimes of belonging to a criminal organization, against the rights of foreign citizens and document forgery. In addition, there is an eighth member of the organization, who is charged with the same acts and is in prison serving a sentence for another cause.
In the operation, three homes have been searched and passports fraudulently used by the organization, files with documentation to regularize the situation of irregular immigrants, falsified official documentation and mobile phones, among other effects, have been seized.
The organization recruited migrants of Maghreb origin, minors or adults, who had arrived to the islands by boat and confined them in different places while preparing the false documentation and all the necessary infrastructure for their departure. Once obtained, they were transferred to the different Canary ports and airports, providing them with the necessary instructions to avoid being detected. On some occasions, the organization's smugglers accompanied them during the air or sea journey, thus ensuring the return of the documentation.
From the Civil Guard and the National Police they explain that the connections of this organization with criminal networks based in Morocco and other States of the European Union were constant, offering among their services the charter in a boat from Morocco to the Canary Islands for migrants who were in the African continent. They also diversified their work, taking care in turn of meticulously organizing fraudulent asylum applications, using for this purpose a lawyer enrolled in criminal activities.
The agents estimate that this organization would have organized more than 80 departures from the islands with a profit of more than 100,000 euros.
