A total of 32 people were arrested in
the southern cities of Potenza and Messina in probes into two
separate scams to give migrants fraudulent stay permits in
Italy.
Potenza police placed 16 people under house arrest for providing
nine-month stay permits to migrants.
Potenza prosecutors placed 56 people under investigation in the
local area and in Milan, Florence, Foggia and La Spezia.
The alleged scam gang charged migrants 5,000 euros per permit,
but gave discounts as far as 1,500 euros on the basis of the
number of requests or personal or family relationships, police
said.
In Messina, meanwhile, police arrested another 16 people (five
taken to prison and 11 placed under house arrest) on suspicion
of belonging to two criminal groups who allegedly enabled
irregular non-EU migrants to stay in Italy by arranging bogus
marriages with Italian women.
The scam involved multiple fake marriages featuring men from
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, police said.
Some migrants who had been expelled from Italy allegedly gained
re-entry via the suspected scam.
Each fake marriage cost some 10,000 euros, police said.
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