Twelve people, allegedly members of two illegal immigration networks, have been arrested by French police after being accused of embezzling at least 560,000 euros worth of money meant for asylum seekers.
The members of the two networks, one of which was Moldovan and the other Ukrainian, appeared in the criminal court of Melun this week accused of embezzling 560,000 euros meant for allowances for asylum seekers who had entered France.
The networks allegedly helped bring in several dozen migrants illegally to France in 2019 and 2021 in order to use them to gain access to the allowance funds paid out by the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII), the newspaper Le Figaro reports.
Many of the migrants did not even stay in France for long, with investigators stating that the migrants were housed in camps while they filed for asylum and were later given a cash sum and returned back to their country of origin.
The scheme revolved around ADA cards, debit cards issued to asylum seekers for their personal expenses. Investigators seized several hundred asylum application files, ADA cars and ADA card certificates during the investigation.
While part of the money allegedly embezzled by the networks was spent in France, the rest was sent overseas to Molvoda and Ukraine using money transfer services.
In 2019, migrants had previously complained that the ADA cars did not allow cash withdrawals and that some shops required high minimum purchases for the cards. However, the networks accused of embezzlement are said to have found a way to convert the cards into cash.
“My client has found a way around the fact that ADA cards can no longer be used to withdraw cash. It is understandable that this case may be damaging for future asylum seekers. But there was no personal enrichment,” Vera Goguidze, who serves as the lawyer for one of the suspects, said.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.
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