SPANISH NATIONAL Police have arrested 24 immigrants, and a Spanish construction promoter, for making false padron registrations and producing fake residence permits in the region.
Following collaboration between the police and the statistics office in the Torre Pacheco Town Hall, and based on information related to false registration of foreign citizens in other municipalities across Spain, ‘Operation Delhi’ was set up two months ago. Suspicions were first aroused when an unusual number of foreign nationals, mainly from Pakistan, India and Morocco, registered in the same building.
Subsequent enquires unveiled that the owner of the block where all these people were registered was a well-known promoter and builder in Torre Pacheco who, after housing them, began to fraudulently register them on the system. Most of those involved, apart from being illegal in Spain, were actually living elsewhere in the country and had never been in Murcia except for the sole purpose of processing the false identities.
The builder, a 60-year-old Spaniard, charged each person up to €300 to carry out the frauds.
The investigations were carried out by the Aliens and Borders Brigade of the National Police based in Cartagena, and further arrests are not being ruled out in the coming weeks.
