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Missing Portuguese man found dead in Berlin river

A 27-year-old Portuguese man missing in Berlin since January was found dead in the Spree River by police officers on Friday.

Published: 6 March 2009 16:05 CET

Missing Portuguese man found dead in Berlin river

Photo: Christian Nordkvist for Exberliner Magazine

The city’s missing persons squad discovered the body of Afonso Freire de Novais Santos Tiago near the Schilling Bridge – not far from several popular Berlin clubs – using a boat with sonar equipment.

Friends and relatives had started an unprecedented search for the man after he disappearing following a night out on January 10.

Police said they currently had no evidence of foul play in the man’s death.

Only on Tuesday, a Colombian man missing since mid-February was found dead in another arm of the Spree. The captain of dredging boat plying the Landwehr canal discovered his body in the Kreuzberg district.

The authorities expect an autopsy will determine the cause of the Colombian’s death in the coming days.

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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