Twenty-six people were arrested and eleven million euros in assets (property, luxury cars, jewelry, gold, machines, etc.) were seized as part of a vast investigation into a criminal organization smuggling migrants from the Indian subcontinent and money laundering, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from the border police (PAF) in Roissy, Thursday, November 28.
These interconnected networks of smugglers, who billed their services between 15,000 and 26,000 euros per head, are suspected of having illegally brought several thousand people from India, Sri Lanka and Nepal into France since September 2021. “Smugglers facilitated migrants' travel to the European Union via Dubai or African states, while providing them with illegally obtained tourist, work or medical visas”explains Julien Gentile, director of PAF Roissy, to AFP.
From March to November 2024, twenty-six men were arrested in France: fifteen were placed in pre-trial detention, seven under judicial supervision and four others, recently arrested, were presented Thursday evening to the investigating judge.
Millions of euros in illegal profits
They are accused of belonging to different levels of the criminal organization, from smugglers to launderers to secret financial brokers. “This is the exceptional nature of this case”welcomes Mr. Gentile.
These networks generated several million euros in illegal profits, the authorities estimated. To reinject these sums into the legal circuit, laundering networks have been structured around construction companies, gold trafficking and the hawala system, that is to say informal transfers of money by intermediates, particularly widespread in the Indian subcontinent.
There remains the head of the network, located in Dubai and whose extradition request has not yet had a favorable outcome, according to the PAF. The investigation was carried out by the branch of the Office for Combating Smuggling of Migrants (Oltim) at Roissy – Charles-de-Gaulle airport.
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