Police in Germany on Tuesday arrested five people suspected of ‘visa marriages’ for Nigerian men in order to get EU permanent residency.
Four hundred police officers raided 41 apartments and rooms believed to be linked to the gang in Berlin, Potsdam, Frankfurt and Görlitz it said. The gang’s suspected leaders – four women and a man- the women age ranges from 46 to 65 and the man 50 years old were arrested.
Authorities have said that they know of at least 70 cases stemming from the same criminal gang. Nigerian men are suspected of paying for fake marriage licenses to Portuguese women in exchange for EU residency.
The criminal organization finds Nigerian men who wish to stay in the EU and pairs them up with women from Portugal. The men pay around 13,000 euros ($15,550) for counterfeit marriage certificates from Nigeria that are shown to the German authorities along with a well-rehearsed love story confirmed by the Portuguese “wife.”
The women usually fly back to Portugal within a matter of days. According to the federal police, the purpose of the raids is to determine whether the homes look like a couple lives there. German authorities then work with Europol to prove that the marriage is a sham.
Similar raids were reportedly carried out in Portugal in tandem with the ones in Germany.
This is the second major raid against visa fraud in recent months. In June, German police took down a ‘fake father’ ring – wherein German men were paid to put their names on the birth certificates of children born to immigrants from Vietnam, parts of Africa and eastern Europe. The babies were automatically granted German citizenship, which allows their mothers to claim German residency permits.
Authorities estimate that about 5,000 of these false paternity claims are made every year. They are notoriously difficult to prosecute however, because police cannot order DNA tests and have to follow strict guidelines when probing into a suspect’s personal life.
