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Report says Berlin a hub for Vietnamese traffickers

Berlin has developed into a European centre for Vietnamese human traffickers, prompting German and French authorities to set up a joint group to combat crime, a German magazine has reported.

Published: 5 October 2008 14:56 CEST

Report says Berlin a hub for Vietnamese traffickers

German news magazine Focus said that the joint Franco-German investigation team would include two Berlin state prosecutors, five officers of Germany’s criminal police, three investigators from Germany’s federal police and an equal number of French experts.

The team is to combat Vietnamese human traffickers who have made Berlin a European hub for their business deals, the magazine reported, quoting unnamed security sources.

Berlin state prosecution authorities estimate that more than 1,000 Vietnamese nationals are smuggled each over year to Berlin via China, Russia, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic. From Berlin, they are then smuggled via Calais and through the Eurotunnel to Britain.

The report said that many of the Vietnamese were made to work on roofed plantations in Britain growing illegal marijuana to pay off their travel costs.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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