24 May - 30 May 2022

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CostaBlancaPeople 24th - 30th May 2022

24th - 30th May - edition 942

Tel: 607 031 113 | claire@costablancapeople.com | costablancapeople.com

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129 arrested in Elche wedding plot Police have arrested 129 people after they discovered as many as 72 fraudulent marriages between Spaniards and foreigners. the arranged marriages were mostly carried out with the objective of obtaining residency in Spain and in some instances, cost the foreigner up

to €10,000. the weddings of convenience were carried out by a lawyer based in elche, who the national Police claim was the leader of a network arranging fraudulent marriages in the area since 2017. Most of the marriages took place at Santa Pola magistrate’s court

and were between a Spanish national and a person from Morocco or algeria seeking to reside in Spain. a complex investigation was carried out over a period of three years by the Unit against immigration networks and False documents (UCRiF) of the alicante Provincial immigration Brigade. the investigation revealed a large number of illegal weddings as well as residence permits for relatives obtained by immigrants thanks to the fake marriages. Police charged the detainees with crimes against the rights of foreign citizens, false documents, false testimony and belonging to a criminal group. as reported by national Police, the epicentre of the network was in an agency in elche where a lawyer had designed a complex criminal network in which different people with different functions participated

to arrange marriages of convenience between Spanish citizens and non-eU foreigners. the lawyer, since arrested as the main person responsible for the scam, had people working to recruit foreign spouses. to do this, would look for people interested in regularizing their illegal situation in Spain and willing to pay large sums of money to do so. once they had the potential foreign husband or wife, they looked for a partner of Spanish origin for each of these people. the next step was to make the relationship between the two seem credible. the criminals would also try to legitimise the couple’s relationship with the town where the illicit marriage was going to take place, which in this case was mostly Santa Pola. at this point the criminals would try to get the couple registered on

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the padrón, the local census. a series of people provided, through false documentation, the legal basis so that the couple could be registered and the marriage take place. Registration on the padrón is one of the fundamental requirements to formalize civil marriages and in many cases the padrón documents were completely false, but in other cases they were carried out with the consent of the legitimate owners of local houses used specifically for this Continued on page 3


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