BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Police in Europe have arrested 98 people as they cracked a smuggling network that brought thousands of Vietnamese to Europe, sometimes as slave labor for secret British marijuana plantations.
The smugglers even set up their own travel agency in Hungary to facilitate their trafficking, Lt. Col. Zoltan Boross of Hungary's National Investigation Office said Tuesday, adding that several of those arrested were counterfeiters who prepared fake documents for the migrants.
"Their main target was Britain, but the Vietnamese were also being smuggled into France and Germany," Boross said Tuesday, adding that once migrants enter the EU, passport-free travel within most of the 27-nation bloc made it difficult to detect them.
Andre Baker, deputy director of Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, said the illegal immigrants paid as much as euro20,000 ($28,500) to be smuggled into Europe, and those who can't pay the full amount were often forced into slave labor.
There are an estimated 35,000 illegal Vietnamese immigrants in Britain, while 40,000 live there legally, Baker said.
The arrests — as well as the discovery of 114 smuggling victims, some of whom have been sent back to Vietnam — came after British authorities began an EU law enforcement project called Vietnamese Organized Immigration Crime in 2009.
While British police discovered 6,900 marijuana plantations last year — up from over 2,000 in 2008 and over 4,000 in 2009— the number of Vietnamese working at them is now shrinking, Baker said.
"Vietnamese 'gardeners' can turn a cannabis plantation around in two months and one 'gardener' can run six premises," Baker said, adding that British, Jamaican and Polish criminals were playing an increasing role in the U.K, marijuana business.
Baker said the financial rewards for the illegal Vietnamese immigrants were substantial, as their annual earnings in Britain could feed a family of 10 for 10 years in Vietnam.
"Still, we want to send them the message that the streets of London are not paved in gold," Baker said, pointing to the risks of illegal migration, including beatings, forced labor and killings.
Source: Associated Press
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