A number of staff members of a tourist agency have been arrested for suspected visa forgery in the coastal city of Oran, Algeria, which is about 400km west of the nation’s capital city of Algiers.
According to the Schengen Visa information service, police in Oran have seized several passports belonging to people who fell victim to the tourist agency’s alleged forgery.
‘The police have recovered other devices such as computer equipment, smartphones, a scanner, and phone chips’, reports SchengenVisaInfo.com.
According to the official visa information site, another visa-trafficking network was uncovered in Oran last year by local police.
There have been attempts to forge the sought-after visa – which enables travellers to enter Europe and access 26 countries ranging from Sweden and Switzerland to France, Germany and Greece – in a number of countries, with arrests taking place in India for similar offences last year.
Six people were arrested after presenting fake Schengen visa stickers to the US embassy in Mumbai and in the same period, ‘another two men got caught and arrested in eastern Algeria for the use of forged, imitation of seals and signatures, falsification of Schengen visa files, and transfer of capital in foreign currency to foreign countries.’
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