3.3 million euros collected: smuggling gang arrested

Federal police and public prosecutors have busted a suspected smuggling gang operating across Europe. There were apartment searches and more than 20 arrests in Hanover, Leipzig and Duisburg as well as in several European countries on Wednesday. The investigators accuse the four suspects who were arrested in Germany alone of having brought at least 748 people illegally to Europe from 2021 to 2024 and of collecting more than 3.3 million euros for doing so.

Prosecutors and the federal police assume that there is a gang that has been smuggling people, especially from Syria, into Europe via the Balkan route for more than two years, as the Traunstein public prosecutor’s office and the Munich Federal Police Office for Combating Crime announced.

The four suspects caught in Germany are between 31 and 43 years old. Two people are said to have died in a smuggling from Belarus to Latvia. The alleged main organizer is also being investigated for incitement to attempted murder in three cases and for aggravated robbery, it said.

During the investigation, the nationwide trend was confirmed that smuggling gangs “act increasingly violently and ruthlessly and become more professional”.

There is a strong suspicion that the group in focus consists of perpetrators with a high level of criminal energy. “They generate considerable financial profits, risk the lives of countless people on the sometimes extremely difficult smuggling routes and do not shy away from using violence against migrants and rival smuggling gangs.” Only international cooperation between the investigating authorities can help against this type of organized smuggling crime.