At the end of August this year, the Bulgarian police authorities arrested eight alleged members of a gang involved in human trafficking in Europe. Four of the suspects detained during the police operation had already been identified as high-value targets who had played leading roles in organised criminal activities. The gang had charged up to €6,000 per person and had smuggled more than 130 people from Turkey to Bulgaria and then to other European destinations via the Western Balkans route.
A total of 15 dwellings in the region of the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv were searched in the operation, with Europol experts and police officers from Romania and Moldova deployed on the ground to support the Bulgarian authorities in their measures.
As a result of these searches, police authorities seized 13 mobile phones, a weapon and ammunition, as well as vehicle documents related to incidents of migrant smuggling in Bulgaria.
This action was carried out within the framework of a regional task force coordinated by Europol, based in Sofia, which focuses on criminal networks trafficking migrants from Turkey to Bulgaria and on to Western Europe.
The smuggling activities resembled the operation of a complex enterprise involving leaders, organisers, and facilitators of various nationalities.
The main leaders were Syrian and Jordanian nationals, who would coordinate criminal activities with other smugglers located in Turkey and along the Western Balkan route. Bulgarian nationals were responsible for logistics, that is, finding and purchasing vehicles used to transport migrants and registering them in the name of other individuals in exchange for a small amount of money. The band would also use drivers from Moldova recruited via the internet.
Since April of that year, 17 incidents related to this gang had been identified, involving migrant trafficking. One of the main leaders was already known to law enforcement, having been investigated in the past for migrant smuggling activities in Austria and Croatia.
Irregular migrants would cross the border between Turkey and Bulgaria on foot, using the guide services offered by organisers in Turkey. After crossing the border, they would be found by Moldovan drivers who would transport them to the Bulgarian-Serbian or Bulgarian-Romanian border.
The drivers received the cars and the GPS coordinates and were sent overnight to pick up the migrants at the agreed-upon locations. Drivers had to communicate with other group members through mobile apps with self-destructing messaging. They received 100 euros per person transported, with an average of between €700 and €1,000 per trip.
The migrants paid around 6,000 euros to be smuggled into Bosnia-Herzegovina and more than 4,000 euros for transportation to Serbia.
Europol’s European Migrant Smuggling Centre has been supporting the work of the task force since its creation. A wide-ranging operational analysis was carried out to identify the various targets and map their criminal activities. Europol also brought together the different countries involved to jointly prepare the final phase of the investigation.
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