Last week, more than five hundred German police officers in four federal states conducted large-scale raids in search of couples who allegedly entered into sham marriages so that the 'spouses' could obtain residence permits in the European Union. In total, 38 suspected families were checked in Saxony, Thuringia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Bavaria. Of these, 29 were in Leipzig and its surroundings.
According to police, cases were opened against 60 defendants. In Saxony alone, law enforcement officers managed to detain 29 people. The investigation has strong reasons to believe that the suspects in 'sham marriages' – citizens of Pakistan and India – entered Eastern Europe and Cyprus with the aim of fictitiously marrying local women to obtain a residence permit in Germany as spouses.
Police also learned that intermediaries in marriage fraud also forged work and registration certificates. For their services, the criminals demanded from clients between 15,000 and 22,000 euros.
As 'Russkaya Germaniya' notes, the investigation into the case of sham marriages has been conducted by the Leipzig prosecutor's office since 2017. The first valuable information for the investigation was obtained from abroad as a result of effective cooperation between the federal police and Europol.