The scene is so close to us due to its recurrence in films, series and documentaries set in the southern states of the US.. But rarely had it been replicated with such accuracy in our country.. High hours of the morning. Any given day in January, at a specific point in the capital of Malaga. A large group of immigrants, mostly of sub-Saharan origin, shelters from the humidity that seeps into the bones while waiting. They open their doors and begin to select those who get on them. Their destiny: works distributed throughout Andalusia and Madrid in which they will work as bricklayers and security guards during marathon days and for just over 800 euros per month. Workers in an irregular situation, victims of a family business network led by a fifty-year-old patriarch capable of promoting an association to help and advise immigrants in which to attract cheap labor.
The criminal organization, based in the capital of Malaga, but which operated in different parts of the country, acted through a conglomerate of five companies dedicated to providing services to other firms in the construction sector.. Sources of the investigation, led by agents of Group II and IV of the Central Unit of Illegal Immigration Networks and Document Falsifications (Ucrif) of the Provincial Police Station of Malaga, explained to El Confidencial that those investigated allegedly used the identities of workers given from Social Security registration to introduce irregular immigrants into the labor market.
The leader of the organization held different positions in the investigated companies, such as an alleged association to help immigrants that the National Police have concluded that he used to recruit immigrants in an irregular situation as cheap labor. “They took advantage of the vulnerability of these people, and their desire to regularize their situation in the country, to offer them jobs that they carried out with the identity of another person,” explain the sources consulted.. “They paid the money that was budgeted for them without knowing that these employees received approximately 800 euros per month in cash”. A derisory amount if one takes into account the painful conditions that the plot imposed on them. “They had to eat and sleep inside the vehicles and, in addition, they carried out work as a laborer or construction security in days that continued beyond 24 hours,” said the aforementioned body..
The organized group, which faces charges of criminal association, human trafficking, document falsification and against the rights of workers, not only kept the difference in what was paid by the company that contracted its services, but also offered immigrants, who had more difficulties in accessing a rental house, bed and roof in exchange for paying a monthly rent.
The sources consulted detailed that those investigated offered cheap labor for construction in Malaga and the rest of the Andalusian provinces.. “In a timely manner”, also in Madrid. The concentration of a large number of people of North African and sub-Saharan origin in a specific place in the city generated a certain “neighborhood alarm”, and the residents of the area contacted the authorities.
The UCRIF agents took charge of the investigations, and these led, with some speed, to the immigrant aid association. The study of its corporate structure led to a businessman linked to various companies in the brick sector that, over the years, were replaced as they were activated and were discharged.. A middle-aged guy, with no background, with “little training” and a “low-medium” educational level who relied on a family network to develop his business. One of those capable of standing up in front of the investigators, refusing to testify and keeping silent before every question they ask.
This individual, like the rest of those investigated, took advantage of the vulnerability of his victims, whom he convinced to accept the leonine conditions that they were offered with “false promises to obtain the papers.”.
His arrest, like that of 17 other people, many of them collaborators in the plot, took place on May 17.. The agents carried out four searches in Malaga and inspected the association, investigated companies and a private address that was the headquarters of other companies. In these properties, 30,000 euros in cash, a high-end car, several mobile phones and documentation related to the case were located. An arrest occurred in Madrid.
The Togo operation has also allowed the imputation of four other people, as well as the blocking of 95,000 euros, two houses and 27 vehicles.