The police have data, for example, on residents of Ukraine and Belarus who were brought to Belgium by members of this gang. Then their documents were taken away and they were provided with a legend about the ‘civil war in Chechnya’. Further, these people applied to the immigration service for asylum as ‘refugees from the Chechen war’. The success of the operation depended on how plausibly they managed to present their legend. According to Commissioner Nelissen, several so-called ‘Chechens’ have already received asylum, other applications are under consideration, but there are also refusals. The police are studying the possibility of depriving refugee status of those who obtained it illegally.
The smuggling gang, which has been operating for three years, consists of Slovaks and Chechens. Seven representatives of this group have been arrested in Borgloon. Whether members of this gang work in other regions of the country remains to be found out, the police chief noted. He also said that the local police have called on all colleagues in Belgium to pay close attention to cars with Slovak license plates. The fact is that the uncovering of the criminal network began with an investigation into an accident involving a car with Slovak license plates in the city of Heers last year. The driver at fault turned out to have a fake driver's license, car documents, and license plates. This served as a starting point for reaching the gang.
According to police, there is a division of labor within the group: Chechens deal with human smuggling, and Slovaks with forging documents and license plates. They produce license plates and a full set of fake documents, including a car insurance certificate. The whole ‘package’ costs one thousand euros, the police said. Car owners in Slovakia do not even suspect that cars with the same license plates as theirs are driving around Belgium.
Nelissen suggests that there are ‘several thousand, maybe even many more’ such cars in the country. In his opinion, there is a ‘huge criminal network’ in Belgium for producing fake car documents. The gang also undertook the registration of cars using fake documents. At the same time, the state treasury was deprived of corresponding taxes and fees, and mandatory insurance was not paid either. The state budget, according to Nelissen, lost hundreds of thousands of euros.
During searches in Heers and Borgloon, fake license plates, blank document and insurance certificate forms, and large sums of money were found. The police also found fake documents in Leuven. The gang also has people who ‘beat out’ debts and force participants of the ‘game’ to follow its ‘rules’.
Fake documents were bought mainly by people from Central and Eastern Europe, but the police do not rule out that there were also Belgians among the clients, since with fake license plates one can avoid paying fines.