Illustrative photo of a refugee travel document. – ALLILI MOURAD / SIPA
Two illegal immigration channels, one Ukrainian and the other Moldovan, were dismantled last week in Seine-et-Marne, after having embezzled at least one million euros of allowances for asylum seekers, a we learned this Monday from a police source.
A total of nine people – six Ukrainians, three Moldovans – were arrested and imprisoned following an express investigation carried out since July 2020 by the Central Office for the Suppression of Irregular Immigration and the Employment of Foreigners without title (Ocriest).
A “simple but effective” operating method
“We were seized because, for two years, there had been a sharp increase, considered abnormal, of asylum requests from Ukrainians and Moldovans in the prefecture of Seine-et-Marne”, explained to the AFP the head of Ocriest, Xavier Delrieu, whose service is attached to the Central Directorate of Border Police (DCPAF).
The modus operandi, “simple but effective” according to the commissioner, consisted in bringing in by bus asylum seekers from Ukraine and Moldova, attracted by a better life in France. On the spot, the migrants were housed in makeshift boxes fitted out in former warehouses of disused factories in the department, such as in Dammarie-lès-Lys and Emerainville, where a large Ukrainian and Moldovan community lives.
A telephone and assistance were then provided to them to submit their asylum application to the prefecture, giving them the right to a payment card credited with the amount of the asylum seekers allowance (ADA), i.e. 420 euros per month for a adult. “The network then redirected the migrants, sometimes by force, to Ukraine and Moldova while keeping their cards throughout the asylum procedure, generally six to eight months,” reports Xavier Delrieu.
Traffic facilitated by a telephone platform
In total, in ten months of investigation, Ocriest estimated that the network had thus recovered 500 ADA cards, ie “between 1 and 1.2 million euros embezzled”. Part of the amount was spent in France, the rest sent to Ukraine and Moldova by Western Union or MoneyGram transfer. Police operations took place on Monday in Ukraine, with eight people arrested and around fifty searches planned.
“This is the negative counterpart of the establishment of the telephone platform in Île-de-France, almost three years ago,” responded Didier Leschi, Director General of the French Office for Immigration and Immigration. integration (OFII), which pays the ADA. This platform “has accelerated access to asylum applications and have emerged channels that have benefited from the windfall because this scam is only profitable if you manage to register a lot of asylum seekers very quickly”, added Didier Leschi.