Czech police have broken up a major international ring of document forgers
which was based in Prague and Brno but operated in several other European
countries, a spokesman for the organized crime unit of the Czech police
force said on Friday. Seventeen people including one Czech citizen were
arrested during police raids over the last week. The gang was headed by
five Albanian and Bulgarian men with permanent residency in the Czech
Republic. They forged Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Belgian, Dutch, Finnish
and
Danish passports, IDs and driving licences, as well as those of various
post-Soviet states.
The police said the gang had gained control of the
European black market for forged documents over the last decade as its
counterfeits could not really be detected during ordinary checks. If
convicted, gang members face up to 10 years in prison.