The lawyer of an agency has been about to turn Elche (Alicante) into a place of pilgrimage for weddings, like Las Vegas.
The problem is that a good part of the links were held outside the borders of the law.
For at least four years, between 2017 and 2020, the lawyer's office was transformed into a processing center for at least 72 marriages of convenience, in which the non-EU spouses solved all the paperwork and learned the necessary instructions to obtain marriage permits. residence fraudulently, in exchange for a price that could amount to up to 10,000 euros.
After three years of investigation, the National Police has dismantled the plot, which operated in Alicante and Murcia, and has arrested 129 people, accused of crimes against the rights of foreign citizens, false documents,
The police operation, called Polasanta, began in March 2019. A tip-off revealed that a lawyer from Elche was leading a large and organized network that allowed residence permits to be obtained through marriages of convenience.
Except for the bride's bouquet, they got everything.
First, they captured both spouses, both foreigners "interested in regularizing their illegal situation in our country willing to pay the large sum of money that could reach up to ten thousand euros", as well as "the couple of Spanish origin chosen to each of these people”, who received an economic remuneration.
Subsequently, the plot elaborated a credible story for each marriage, which even instructed the false witnesses of the wedding.
"The lawyer herself," say the researchers, "meticulously instructed the spouses and witnesses, in the different phases of the entire process, preparing them on the version that they had to support in order to circumvent the different administrations."
The script that she prepared for each couple included even the smallest detail, both of their emotional bond and of the address where they would never reside, "so that fraud would not be detected in the marriage interviews."
Through these stories, they set the terms of the alleged sentimental relationship between the two and their link with the town where they were going to live their fictional fairy tale, the neighboring town of Santa Pola, in whose justice of the peace all the marriages were held without that contain police interventions in their facilities.
At this point, the ringleader had a team of "intermediaries and enumerators", say the sources of the investigation, who dedicated themselves to "making false censuses" for the alleged boyfriends.
This procedure concentrated, underlines the police, the greatest efforts of the criminal network, since it is "one of the fundamental requirements" for obtaining residence permits.
Sometimes,
the papers were “completely false” and on other occasions “they would have been made with the consent of the legitimate owners of the houses used for this purpose”, also “in exchange for money”.
If necessary, the illicit marriage agency even counted on the participation of "two real estate agencies" from Santa Pola, which provided them with both presumed addresses for the contracting parties and "false lease contracts".
The investigations finally determined that the network processed up to 72 marriage files "of dubious legality", through which at least 51 allegedly illegal community family residence permits were obtained, "of which their extinction has been requested."
The police have arrested 129 people between the ages of 23 and 71, "66 men and 63 women, of predominantly Spanish, Moroccan and Algerian nationalities", although there are also arrests of Iranian, Argentine or Bangladeshi origin.
All of them participated in one way or another in the weddings of convenience, from the head of the group to those who acted as intermediaries, false witnesses or the spouses themselves.
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