Sleeping on the ground and working 12 hours a day: this is how migrants were exploited in a town in Malaga

The National Police have arrested 43 people in a town in Malaga who were part of an organization dedicated to the fraudulent exploitation and regularization of migrants.

Those arrested had been carrying out this illegal activity for at least five years, for which they had created two agricultural companies in the Malaga municipality of Casarabonela (2,500 inhabitants).

The majority of victims, which exceeds a hundred people, are citizens of Moroccan origin in an irregular administrative situation who were forced to maintain work days of more than 12 hours even in the worst heat waves during the summer and slept on the floor in houses "destroyed and in subhuman conditions," according to police sources.

Data from the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO) show that Andalusia is the autonomous community where the labor situation of workers is inspected the most.

This is how 3,914 people are on record in 2021 (last year available), when 11 people were arrested for labor trafficking in that region, a figure that reached 31 throughout the country.

The complexity of carrying out police operations focused on labor exploitation and of accurately accounting for the figures of criminal organizations are well reflected in the figures of CITCO, an agency under the Ministry of the Interior.

In their latest available data, corresponding to 2021, they show that in all of Spain there were only 31 people arrested for labor trafficking —the majority in Andalusia, with 11, and Catalonia,

with 9— and that the figure reaches 244, the majority of Spanish and Romanian nationality, since 2017. In the five years that goes from that year to 2021, 518 exploited people have been released, of which 273 were men, 24 minors and the rest, women.

The majority of inspected workers —some 13,000 per year— have Spanish nationality, followed by those of Morocco and Romania.

The leader of the organization is a citizen of Morocco who founded the first of his two societies in 2017 in Casarabonela, a small town of just over 2,500 inhabitants in the Sierra de las Nieves region, west of the capital of Malaga. .

Both people in regular and irregular administrative situations worked for him.

The difference was that the latter had to work longer hours and receive a lower salary.

Research sources explain that the majority of people who lacked documentation had arrived in Spain by boat.

Necessity and word of mouth led them to Casarabonela, where they were exploited in agricultural tasks and lived in old houses in the town itself, owned by the criminal network.

The ringleader offered the services of his workers, both regular and irregular, to various agricultural businessmen in the area.

These, "with full knowledge of what they were doing," according to the agents who have participated in the investigation, hired the crews.

They were made up of a member of the organization, who acted as the boss, and employees who were exploited at work.

Depending on the season, they were dedicated to collecting lemons, carob beans, olives or other products from the Sierra de las Nieves region or from the surroundings of the municipality of Coín, in the Guadalhorce Valley.

The days could be extended to 12 hours a day despite the fact that they are very physical jobs.

To find out all the details of the organization, the agents have carried out a complex job that started in November 2021 after a notice to the Málaga Immigration Office.

It has not been easy to carry out follow-ups or inspections in a rural environment and a small town where all the neighbors know each other and any stranger draws attention.

Nor does it describe a business network and labor contracts developed by the organization, which had the support of several employees of an agency and a lawyer.

In fact, researchers have verified that companies also committed tax fraud related to taxes such as company taxes, VAT or personal income tax.

The network was also used to fraudulently regularize migrants from Morocco.

They had to pay between 1,500 and 3,000 euros for those responsible for the plot to provide fictitious work contracts through which they could obtain residence and work permits for their administrative situation.

Others directly bought contracts to contribute to Social Security and access different social benefits, such as unemployment, without having worked and even residing in their country of origin.

The operation has culminated in the arrest of 43 people of various nationalities, most of them Spanish and Moroccan.

Among those arrested are both the leader and the members of the criminal organization, which has been operating since at least 2017 and whose labor exploitation there are more than a hundred victims.

Businessmen from the surroundings of Casarabonela who contracted the services of the network with full knowledge of what was happening have also been arrested, as well as those who bought contracts to defraud the public treasury.

The employees of the consultancy and the lawyer who collaborated with the band are accused of various crimes, although they were not arrested.

During the searches carried out, the agents of the National Police have intervened 56,985 euros in cash,