At least eleven customers from Austria and Germany paid a lot of money for alleged diplomatic passports from the Caribbean island state of St. Kitts and Nevis. What they didn’t know was that they had been taken in by document forgers. The damage is said to be more than 300,000 euros.
The public prosecutor’s office in Wels is investigating two suspected fraudsters, a 47-year-old Bosnian and a 53-year-old Bulgarian. The duo was wanted on an international arrest warrant. They were arrested on Tuesday: the Bosnian inland, the Bulgarian in his home country.
The 53-year-old may have lived in luxury in Pomorie on the Black Sea. A number of forged documents were found during a search of two apartments, a yacht and two cars, the Bulgarian news agency reported. In the case of the Bosnian, pre-trial detention was requested, but it was still unclear whether the Bulgarian would be extradited from Bulgaria to Austria, according to a spokeswoman for the Wels public prosecutor’s office.
Whether the men forged the diplomatic passports themselves is still under investigation. It is also not certain whether the buyers of the forged documents will be prosecuted.
Source: Nachrichten
