The price migrants pay smugglers to reach European countries and Canada
Migrants trying to reach European countries pay smugglers thousands of Euros and prices go up if they want to reach the UK or Canada. In some cases, migrants are given fake or stolen passports to fly to their destinations.
The latest investigation by Attika Aliens Division, Europol and the UK’s National Crime Agency into an organised crime group involved in smuggling migrants from Greece to other European Union countries offers insight into the affair.
According to Europol, for each leg of the journey, the network received between €1,000 and €2,000 per person, with main destinations being Austria, Germany and, in some cases, the Netherlands. Migrants were provided either with false documents or other people’s genuine passports.
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Bu the prices the migrants were charged depended on their desired countries of destination. For EU countries, the price varied from €4,000 up to €6,000, except for the UK where the price varied from €8,000 up to €10,000. A facilitated trip to Canada was €16,000 per person.
The organised crime group recently dismantled in Athens consisted of two sub-teams. Both sub-teams were involved in smuggling migrants mainly from Greece, either by land using the “Balkan route,” or by air. In particular, for facilitation through the Balkan route, the migrants crossed the border from Greece to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
From there, other members of the group picked up the migrants and organised further transport to the destination countries. One of the teams illegally transported migrants by air, mainly via Athens International Airport but also the national airports of Heraklion and Mytilene.
“In this large operation in Athens at the end of May, a total of 12 individuals were arrested, of which seven were members of the organised crime group. Four arrestees were migrants that were about to be smuggled. In addition, one Afghan national was arrested for carrying a false identity card. Seven members of the organised crime group were already arrested earlier. The members of the network received up to €16,000 per person that was illegally transported, with the money transferred via the Hawala informal money transfer system,” Europol says in a press release.
According to the investigation, the network was involved in 26 facilitation cases – 11 of them using air transport, 14 by land and one by sea.
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