French police have smashed an international network that printed and sold fake British passports across Europe, reported The Daily Mail of UK yesterday. Around 20 people, mostly from Bangladesh and Pakistan, were arrested in this connection in co-ordinated raids across the Paris suburbs on Tuesday. All have been placed under official investigation, the daily added.Officials at the French frontier police said they seized more than 100 forged British passports, as well as stamps used for forging British birth certificates and tax documents. They also found order forms and passport-size photographs of potential buyers. "The passports were being sold for between £2000 and £4000 to illegal immigrants in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany," said a spokesman of the frontier police. "We found more than 100 forged passports, all of very high quality.
These were destined to be sold to immigrants or others not entitled to British passport, and we have a list of potential buyers who had placed advance orders," he added.
The passports were being made in several separate buildings around Paris, and also in a mobile forging and printing unit based in a transit van. One of the "manufacturing units" was based in a specially adapted van that moved around the Paris region.