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The European Union’s police force Europol said on Thursday it had smashed a criminal gang smuggling Vietnamese people into Europe, with a final destination of Britain via small boats across the Channel.
Europol said they had made eight arrests and seized passports, vehicles and cash in a French-led sting that took place on 30 March.
Among the arrests was a network leader detained in Germany under a European warrant. Police arrested another high-level organiser in Hungary before the swoop at the end of last month.
The Vietnamese people entered the EU’s borderless Schengen Area in Hungary, with short-stay visas or residence permits, before travelling to France by air.
Once in France, they were held for a time in Paris before being transported to northern France and handed to a Kurdish-Iraqi group that arranged the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats.
“The members of this migrant smuggling network organised the entire journey, including logistics, accommodation and transport, relying on complicit drivers and facilitators,” Europol said in a statement.
They said the network transported at least 15 migrants per month, charging them up to €22,000 for the full journey.
The plight of Vietnamese migrants making the hazardous trip to Europe was highlighted when 39 people suffocated to death in a refrigerated container on their way to Britain.
The bodies of the migrants, two of whom were just 15 years old, were discovered inside the sealed unit at a port near London in October 2019.
Europol had announced a similar operation on 3 April targeting a different smuggling gang transporting Vietnamese migrants.
That operation, which also took place on 30 March, resulted in 19 arrests, 16 in France and three in the UK.
Additional sources • AFP