Nine people have been detained by the Polish authorities on suspicion of being part of an organised criminal group that helped migrants illegally cross the border from Belarus and then transported them on to western Europe. The investigation has been carried out in cooperation with Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
The gang’s activities reportedly saw millions of euros change hands, with Poland’s border guard saying that the group’s “cashier” had paid out €8.7 million, including €4.3 million to “couriers” who transported migrants. The detained suspects were found in possession of €475,000 and $30,350 in cash.
“One of the leaders was responsible for financial issues, another for providing information to migrants on when and where they should cross from Belarus,” Artur Szykuła, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the city of Zamość, told TVP Lublin.
Money seized during searchers of the suspected people smugglers (photo: Nadbużański Oddział Straży Granicznej)
They recruited “couriers” using popular messaging apps. These people then used their own cars to smuggle the migrants who had already managed to illegally enter Poland onwards to Western Europe, mostly to Germany.
The gang is accused of operating from September 2021 to January 2022 in the area near the border with Belarus as well as in the cities of Warsaw, Wrocław and Łódź.
During that period, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees – mainly from the Middle East – have been trying to cross into Poland, in a border crisis that has been engineered by the Belarusian authorities. Among those who have managed to enter Poland, most have travelled on to western Europe.
The nine suspects were detained last week in Sławatycze, a village in eastern Poland, close to the border with Belarus. Previously, the border guard had detained seven others believed to be connected to the gang. Following a court order, 11 of the suspects have been put in pretrial detention for three months.
Last year, almost 400 people were arrested in relation to trafficking migrants from Belarus, according to the Rzeczpospolita daily. The majority of them were foreigners.
According to border guard statistics, 39,697 attempts to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus were recorded last year – over 300 times more than in 2020. Those figures do not include the thousands of cases in which migrants managed to enter without detection.
The number of attempted crossings has fallen since its peak in late October and early November, as the weather has worsened and flights have been arranged to repatriate people from Belarus to the Middle East. But Polish border guards still report dozens of people trying to enter Poland on a daily basis.
Nagranie z pojazdu obserwacyjnego Straży Granicznej.
Grupa 15 nielegalnych imigrantów-obywateli Iraku, przekroczyła granicę we wtorek 11.01 na odcinku #PSGMielnik Cudzoziemcy próbowali się ukryć w zabudowaniach gospodarczych. Wszyscy zostali zatrzymani.#zgranicy #PJN pic.twitter.com/lE9o6zt5FG
— Straż Graniczna (@Straz_Graniczna) January 12, 2022
Main image credit: CO MON (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna
