Network made around €2 million in fraudulent scheme that sold Portuguese nationality
Details of the ‘arranged marriages’ scam exposed by PJ police yesterday are now being widely aired. Tabloid Correio da Manhã runs with the headline that one woman, from Cascais, ended up marrying three immigrants: one from Egypt, one from Bangladesh and another from Pakistan.
All these men will, through their marriages, have been able to access Portuguese nationality – and thus the ability to circulate freely throughout Schengen space.
Right now, the PJ police operation “Digital Alliance” is still investigating thie Cascais case. It involves a woman now aged “between 58 and 59”. It is not clear if all the marriages were ‘for the purposes only of obtaining papers’, or if any of them were for the more normal reasons.
What is known is that the address given by the woman for all three marriages is that of a business in Odemira that deals in the hiring of foreign labour (Odemira being one of the municipalities in this country with the highest concentration of foreign workers, many of them working for multinationals producing salad greens in hectares of greenhouses along the Vicentina coast).
CM adds that “the case of this woman in Cascais sounded alarm bells and concern among workers in registry offices. The subject was the target of (many) commentaries over the years”.
It was these commentaries that eventually made their way to the ears of the authorities which have subsequently exposed this alleged network, essentially a form of illegal immigration.
As to yesterday’s police swoop on around 57 different locations, the 58 people arrested were almost all former brides – Portuguese women.
The fact that police have identified them means that their ‘husbands’ have also been identified. It is now simply a question of finding them…
At a press conference at the PJ’s headquarters in Lisbon yesterday, criminal investigation coordinator José Ribeiro said this scam appears to have involved 60 marriages, each one of which will have cost the ‘grooms’ around €33,000.
Almost all the grooms have long since ‘relocated from Portugal’ (if indeed they were ever here for any length of time).
Inspector Ribeiro explained that by celebrating a marriage, the grooms will have automatically been eligible for residence permits, with nationality following after the statutory period of five years (a period which the government is trying to extend to 10).
Yesterday was the first phase of this operation. The second phase will be the rounding up of grooms in various European countries, who will risk losing the Portuguese nationality they effectively purchased, adds CM.
For this second phase, other police forces are expected to become involved.
CM writes that the “leaders of this network were all of Portuguese nationality”. This is not actually very revealing, as so many foreigners already have Portuguese nationality.
The suspects are all due to face questioning before bail measures are decided – and further arrests are highly likely in the coming days/ weeks.
Sources: LUSA/ Correio da Manhã
