Police continue crackdown on illegal expatriate recruitment

In a special operation to investigate cases of illegal expatriate workers in the Maldives, the Maldives Police Services (MPS) has detained 17 individuals and located a large number of forged documents, and more than 4000 passports. These individuals are suspected to have conducted a business of importing illegal labourers from various countries to the Maldives.

In the police operation commenced on the 12th of last month on the order of the government, 18 companies have been investigated and 7 of them have involved in importing foreign workers into the country illegally. Speaking to the press, Inspector Mohamed Riyaz from MPS said today yesterday that arrested individuals were all connected to the 7 companies, and that 12 of them were locals, while 5 were foreigners.

Riyaz said that out of the 4000 passports located by the police, more than 3000 have been found in the possession of two companies that went by the names of Ozone Investment and Arisco Private Limited. Riyaz also said that there was evidence that there had been connivance between these two companies.

Riyaz added that the passports found were apparently not fakes. “Our investigations so far have not revealed those passports as fake. They appear to be valid passports”, he said. “We are verifying them with Immigration Department database, in order to check whether they belong to workers who have already entered the country illegally”.

Among forged documents located while in the possession of investigated companies, according to the police, included those which were necessary for foreign recruitment processes such as quotation requests, forged local investment documents and identity cards.

Inspector Riyaz said that some 70 local investments had been registered by using the forged documents found, and that most of such investments did not even have an office. He also said that illegal recruitment was done for financial gain, as a foreign worker recruited by a company would bring them no less than an earning of US Dollar 2000.

The police also said that in addition to those arrested for being involved with companies conducting illegal recruitment, a number of staff working in the Immigration Department and Ministry of Human Resources, although all of these were questioned and then released. Inspector Riyaz assured that further investigations would be conducted to see whether these civil servants had involved in these transactions illegally, or whether they had merely acted with negligence.

The police said that a number of foreigners also involved in illegal recruitment, and that the “business” was most probably conducted by secret networks which operated across borders.