People are said to have paid up to 21,000 euros to come to Germany. They had to work off the debts in nail or massage studios. Two suspected masterminds have been caught.
Berlin / Bratislava (dpa) – During simultaneous searches in Berlin and Bratislava, two alleged smugglers were arrested.
They are accused of commercial smuggling crime, said a spokesman for the Federal Police Inspectorate for Crime Control in Halle on Monday morning in Berlin. The arrests were made during a nationwide operation against organized human smugglers. Around 700 officials were on duty, it said. The operation continued in the morning.
According to the federal police, 33 objects were searched simultaneously from 6 a.m. on Monday – in Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, as well as in the capital of Slovakia. With 16 objects, the focus of the operation was therefore in Berlin. One of the two main suspects, a Vietnamese national, was also arrested there. Another woman was said to have been placed in Bratislava. The women are considered to be the masterminds behind the human smuggling, according to the spokesman for the federal police. The accused from Berlin is a Vietnamese citizen.
The women are said to have smuggled Vietnamese into Germany via conspiratorial apartments in Slovakia. According to the spokesman for the federal police, “smuggling wages” of 13,000 to 21,000 euros were demanded. “Since the people could not raise this money immediately, they were forced to work off the smugglers’ wages,” said the spokesman. This happened in nail or massage studios or in so-called brothel apartments.
According to the spokesman, the Federal Police Inspectorate for the fight against crime in Halle was commissioned by the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Leipzig Public Prosecutor’s Office. This is embedded in investigations by the police authority of the European Union, Europol.
During the searches, numerous documents, data carriers and bank details were secured, the police said. The spokesman said that victim protection was of particular importance when deployed. Almost 50 people were found in the searched objects. It will be checked whether there is a special need for protection, said the spokesman. Specially trained officials are involved in the operation.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210531-99-802425 / 2
