Marriages can be made to last. Or just to appear. Couplers always marry strangers. So one wants to buy the right to stay illegally, the other earns from it. A trial in Stuttgart is now to shed light on the scene.
Stuttgart (dpa) - The traces lead to China and Vietnam, to Pakistan, Portugal and also to India. With fake marriage marriages, foreigners are increasingly gaining the right to stay in Germany permanently.
The police keep beating and arresting suspects, many of whom are rejected asylum seekers. But according to estimates by the federal police, the number of unreported cases is high: numerous fictitious marriages do not even appear in the public service apparatus, be it in the stress of the office or from a lack of experience.
The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) calls the fictitious marriage again an "important modus operandi" in the smuggling crime. Rejected asylum seekers in particular see another opportunity in this extremely costly route: The number of cases of "industrial and gang-like smuggling" rose by 84 percent to officially 223 in 2018, mainly among the suspects, mainly because of the prohibited coupling of strangers According to the Federal Criminal Police Office, there was a significant increase of 82 percent to 340. Newer figures are not yet available. But given the number of unreported cases, these statistics only represent a small part of the mass.
The action of alleged smugglers and mediators from Germany and India who have been sitting on the dock of the regional court in Stuttgart from Monday (1.30 pm) seems to have been a "classic". They were arrested last May and after months of investigations into a raid in several cities in Baden-Württemberg and Saarland and have been in custody since then.
The alleged gang is said to have organized at least 39 illegal marriages between June 2014 and May 2019, predominantly between men from India or Pakistan and with Bulgarian or Greek women. "We find that couplers and their customers often have the same background," says the Baden-Württemberg State Criminal Police Office (LKA).
The goal of the "customer": a right of residence in Germany. Brokering the fictitious marriages is also a very lucrative business for the smugglers: "The illegal profit per case amounts to around 25,000 euros," said a Stuttgart police spokesman after the arrest of the Indian men. The EU citizens - most of them are women - are also wasting their time: According to the experience of the BKA and LKA, they are rewarded with amounts of up to 7,000 euros.
As in the Stuttgart case, the "customers" of the smugglers usually book a complete package: According to the experience of investigators, the men willing to marry - often with tourist visas - for example from Southeast Asia and meet their mock wives from Eastern Europe in Cyprus or Denmark.
For the first and in almost all cases for the last time. After the married couple, the two newlyweds quickly go their separate ways. The women usually fly back home while the husbands enter Germany and apply for an EU residence card.
They are often accompanied by interpreters and equipped with fake or fictitious rental and employment contracts - a prerequisite for a residence permit. The Stuttgart defendants are said to have obtained fake documents, as the district court announced.
Cyprus plays a role as a marriage crime scene, according to the BKA, fictitious marriages are also often concluded in Ireland, Belgium or the Balkans. Denmark has long been considered a "wedding paradise" for fake marriages because the bureaucratic hurdles in the neighboring country were low. The government in Copenhagen has been trying to put a stop to this for several months by deciding to have weddings for foreigners checked centrally.
In Germany, the offices are the sticking point: "If there are doubts about the seriousness of a marriage, this is usually the case there and at the moment when a residence card is applied for," said an LKA expert. Employees of the immigration authorities would therefore be sensitized to become skeptical about certain constellations.
However, the couplers are already reacting and evading: "Couplers know very well about the moods in the offices. They adapt well," says the LKA in Stuttgart. "For example, if you are very sensitive in one city, a matchmaker tries with your customer in the neighboring municipality."
Trial dates at Stuttgart Regional Court
Federal picture of smuggling crime 2018 of the BKA