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LookAtVietnam - European police have broken up a network that illegally brought Vietnamese into the UK.
Coordinated by Europol, police arrested 58 people after raiding houses in France, Germany, and Hungary on June 22. Of the 34 arrested in France, 14 were involved in the network in Paris and the northwestern region, while 20 were would-be immigrants. The German police seized five suspects and the Hungarian police caught 19.
According to police, the illegal migrants arrived in France via Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. They traveled to the UK by road or by boat. The British, German, Hungarian, and French police have been watching illegal trafficking gangs for Vietnamese migrants for the last 18 months through a taskforce set up by Europol called the Vietnamese Organized Immigration Crime.
“One illegal immigrant needs to pay 9,000 to 10,000 euros (11,000 to 12,300 dollars) on the way to Europe,” revealed Zoltan Boross of the Hungarian National Bureau of Investigation.
“And if they do not have enough money, then they have to go work on a cannabis plantation for repayment,” he added. ”Since March 2009 these individuals operated in a very well tuned manner for a long period of time with the intent of financial gain.”
The smugglers, themselves Vietnamese, transported their clients to Europe via Moscow, Rome or Istanbul, and housed them in their own hotels in Budapest from where they relocated them to marijuana plantations in other parts of Europe, he explained.
“These immigrants are seriously exploited through cannabis production, extortion and crime, and often when caught, they don’t even know where they are,” Andre Baker, of the British Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), maintained.
“Currently the UK is the favourite destination for illegal immigrants from Vietnam smuggled through other European states,” he observed.
French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said Vietnamese migrants were smuggled into France from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany and hidden in special compartments in trucks and ferries en route to Britain.
Besson noted that the network was “very well-structured” with many international contacts and members with well-defined tasks such as providing shelter or handling finances. A special task force dealing with Vietnamese people smuggling was created 18 months ago after French authorities noticed a hike in arrests of migrants en route to Britain.
French border police reported a 200 percent increase in the number of would-be Vietnamese immigrants apprehended en route to Britain between 2008 and 2009.
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European police break up Vietnamese human trafficking ring | Look At Vietnam - Vietnam news daily update
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