15 people were brought in for questioning after prosecutors of the Iasi Territorial Branch of the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) and judicial police of the Iasi Organized Crime Brigade conducted 13 home searches in the county at crime ring suspects involved in human trafficking and money laundering, a DIICOT release informs.
13 home searches were carried out in parallel in the United Kingdom, under an EUROJUST agreement providing for the establishment of joint investigation teams with the British judicial authorities.
According to organized crime prosecutors, the ring started operating in January 2018 and was active until 2022, deriving money from subjecting 12 people (men and women) to forced labor after luring them with fake job promises abroad and then taking them to the UK, where they were put to forced labor for very little pay.
The members of the group obtained significant amounts of money from human exploitation on Great Britain's territory and transferred the money to Romania, investing it through go-betweens in movable and immovable assets (luxury cars and villas), as well as in real estate projects (blocks of flats and commercial spaces), in order to hide and conceal the illicit origin of the goods, Agerpres.ro informs.
"Following the home searches carried out in Romania, 170,000 euros, 220,000 RON, 70,000 Danish kroner, 13,000 dollars, a luxury car, 2 unlicensed air guns, mobile phones and documents were found and seized," the release states.