Memorandum submitted by Europol
With reference to your letter of 17 October,
in which mention was made of forwarding additional information
to the Committee, I hereby provide you with a response to Question
327, as promised during the Oral Evidence session of 14 October.
"Q327... Have you come across any evidence
of this taking place into the United Kingdom, of children being
trafficked in this way into the United Kingdom for these purposes
and are you able to say whether the children are being trafficked
completely surreptitiously or are they being brought in on some
spurious legal basis?"
Answer: The subject of the Joint Investigation
Team (JIT) that Europol signed on 1 September 2008 with the UK
and Romania focuses solely on this issue. In March 2007, Europol
was briefed by the Romanian Police that 1,107 Roma children had
been trafficked from Romania to other EU states, including the
UK. As a result of the UK's search against the data supplied by
Romania, it became apparent that 200 of the "Europa children"
had come to the attention of 33 different police agencies across
the UK. This investigation and the JIT are supported by AWF Phoenix
and Europol is working in close cooperation with the Metropolitan
Police Service.
All of these children were trafficked to the
UK for the specific purpose of being exploited through the commission
of street crime offences and with an ancillary purpose of defrauding
the UK Social Security system. Many were trafficked using genuine
travel documents, as well as counterfeit or forged documents.
Many of their parents or legal guardians were complicit in their
trafficking as they expect a return on the profits made, with
the particular trafficking group involved expecting to earn up
to €24 million per year from these 200 children. It is suspected
that most, if not all, of this money is sent back to Romania.
24 October 2008
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