A vehicle of the National Police, in a file image.
The network, whose alleged ‘brain’ was a lawyer based in Elche, had been operating since 2017
The National Police dismantled an alleged criminal group accused of dedicating itself to obtaining residence permits for foreigners by holding marriages of convenience between Spanish citizens and non-EU citizens, arranged mainly in the Santa Pola Justice of the Peace. The network, whose alleged ‘brain’ was a lawyer based in Elche, had been operating since 2017 in Alicante and Murcia.
The investigation, under the name ‘PolaSanta’, lasted for three years and made it possible to arrest 129 people and detect 72 allegedly illegal links that gave rise to 51 community family residence permits. For these fraudulent procedures, the spouses paid up to 10,000 euros, according to the Police in a statement.
The alleged ringleader allegedly “meticulously” instructed the contracting parties for marriage interviews. The 129 detainees, 66 men and 63 women, of various nationalities and between the ages of 23 and 71, were brought to justice on charges of crimes against the rights of foreign citizens, false documents, false testimony and belonging to a group. criminal.
The operation began in March 2019 by the National Police and recently concluded with an investigation that allowed uncovering an “ingenious” criminal network that had been operating since 2017 in Alicante and Murcia.
The epicenter of the network was in Elche, from where the investigators learned that a lawyer operated, who, through her agency, had allegedly designed a complex criminal network in which different people with different functions participated.
Their work was aimed at obtaining, through marriages of convenience between Spanish citizens and non-EU foreigners, the obtaining of residence permits for community relatives for these foreigners in an irregular situation, the vast majority from Morocco and Algeria, in exchange for of large amounts of money.
Functions
The main person in charge and ‘brain’ of the plot had the collaboration of people who played different roles within the organization. Some were recruiting spouses seeking, on the one hand, interested in regularizing their illegal situation in Spain, willing to pay the large sum of money that could reach up to 10,000 euros and, on the other hand, a couple of Spanish origin chosen for each of these people.
Whenever both spouses were available, a plan was orchestrated through the next step for each agreed couple that consisted of making credible the sentimental relationship between them and their relationship with the population where the false marriage was going to take place.
At this point, the “intermediaries” and the “enumerators” provided legal coverage through false documentation so that the marriage process could be carried out. This name of “empadronadores” was in line with their main function, which was presumably aimed at making false registrations for them and that, sometimes they were completely false, and others would have been carried out with the consent of the legitimate owners of the houses used for this end in exchange for money.
This procedure was one of the fundamental requirements for achieving the illicit objective. For this reason, on occasions, they even falsified lease contracts as well as registration authorizations if necessary, always in the town of Santa Pola, in whose Justice of the Peace the fictitious link would finally be held, for which the plot even counted on the participation of two real estate agencies in the coastal town.
“False Witnesses”
Finally, through the collaboration of “false witnesses”, as the last step of participants in the plan, the lawyer herself meticulously instructed the contracting parties and witnesses in the different phases of the entire process.
Thus, he prepared them about the version that they had to hold to circumvent the different administrations and warned them that, in addition to the primary requirement of registering in the locality to start the marriage file, they had to create a version of their supposed affective relationship so that it would not be detected. fraud in marriage interviews.
This is how, presumably, this lawyer from Elche, from her for-profit consultancy and in a coordinated manner in deception, concocted this plan with the active participation of a large group of collaborators in the plot, who always acted in exchange for financial remuneration. .
#detainees #Murcia #Alicante #obtaining #residence #permits #foreigners #cohabiting #marriages
