Three Moldovan citizens were arrested on charges of working as part of a human trafficking network that organized illegal transportation of migrants through Europe, IPN reports.
According to the General Police Inspectorate, the group started work in 2021 and recruited drivers from the Republic of Moldova, promising them salaries of up to €1,000 for each trip. The drivers did not know that they were going to transport migrants who were entering the European Union illegally. Each migrant paid between €5,000 and €7,000, and the drivers transported 30 to 45 migrants per trip.
The recruited drivers were transported to Hungary, from where they took the migrants to other European countries, such as Germany, Croatia and Austria. During the investigation, the authorities discovered that the network was also involved in organizing illegal migration from Central and East Asian countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bangladesh, and India.
Following the searches carried out on January 9, the three suspects were detained for 72 hours. Subsequently, two of them were placed under preventive arrest, and the third under house arrest.
If found guilty of human trafficking and illegal migration, the men will serve 10 to 20 years in jail.
