2014-11-30 Daily Mail: aitoja EU-maiden passeja voi ostaa väärillä tiedoilla

[niemi2]

Daily Mail raportoi joidenkin entisten Neuvostoliiton piirissä olleiden EU-maiden myöntävän passeja "kadoksiin" joutuneille etnisille vähemmistöilleen ja heidän jälkeläisilleen.

Idea on toimia vastaavalla tavalla kuin Suomi aikoinaan inkeriläisille. Passeja myönnetään erittäin löyhin perustein ja sukulaisuussuhteita väärennetään rahaa vastaan Venäjän mafiaan linkittyneiden välitystoimistojen kautta. Muutaman tuhannen euron sijoitus takaa sukulaisuussiteet vaikka Romaniaan ja Romania myöntää passin ostettuja papereita vastaan. Lehdessä arvioidaan, että EU voi saada miljoonia uusia kansalaisia tällä tavoin.

Not Romanian? No problem, here's an EU passport: Agencies with links to Russian mafia offer back-door route to millions

Some former Soviet countries are offering citizenship to ethnic minorities

This allows them an EU passport and provides a back-door route to Europe

Fuelled an illicit passport trade, controlled by agencies with links to mafia

Creates many potential EU citizens who have right to live in the UK

Lax border regulations in Eastern Europe are providing a back-door route into the EU and fuelling an alarming trade in illegal passports, The Mail on Sunday has discovered.

Many former Soviet countries are keen to offer citizenship to ethnic minorities who want to return to their homelands.

But this has also fuelled an illicit trade, mostly controlled by agencies with links to the Russian mafia.

The Latvian government has begun granting citizenship to descendants of Stalin's victims deported to Siberia in the 1940s. Poland, Germany, Romania and

Hungary have similar schemes for descendants of their own people trapped in the former USSR.

Potential new EU citizens created by this perfectly legal route could run into millions but it also opens the way for major passport fraud.

The Mail on Sunday has tracked down agencies offering to broker EU passports for citizens of Russia and war-ravaged Ukraine who are not entitled to these documents.

One Kiev agency boasts that for between €7,500 (£6,000) and €15,000 (£12,000) its lawyers 'have built up some relatively quick methods to acquire Romanian citizenship and passports, as well as citizenship of a number of other EU countries'.

It also boasts Ukrainians with an EU passport will get the right to work 'in England'. The agency boss told our researcher: 'Once we find your Romanian relatives, you have to prove in court that they are authentic.'

When she insisted she did not have any such relatives, she was told: 'No matter. What we do is just find someone with a matching last name who lived in the country before 1940.'

Another option, she was told, was a Hungarian passport, at a cost of €22,000 (£17,500). When the researcher said she didn't speak Hungarian, again she was told this did not matter.

'Our specialists will go through the church books and other databases. Once we find the person, it's almost done. You just have to show up in Budapest to get your passport and an ID card. You'll get all the benefits of being a Hungarian and EU citizen.

When our researcher explained she ultimately wanted to live and work in the UK, she was told: 'Like any Hungarian citizen, you'll get the right to work anywhere in Europe, including the UK.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2854525/Not-Romanian-No-problem-s-EU-passport-Agencies-links-Russian-mafia-offer-door-route-millions.html