Approximately €78,500 in money have been seized by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) final Friday, August 25, in a search associated to visa fraud within the French Embassy carried out on the premises of a journey agent.

The investigation was carried out in Ludhiana, a big industrial metropolis within the north Indian state of Punjab, the place the suspect journey agent, Balwinder Singh Bartia, resides, SchengenVisaInfo.com reviews.

The CBI later introduced that incriminating supplies have been recovered throughout the search, whereas an quantity of roughly Rs 70.10 Lakh (€78,542.45) have been seized from a financial institution locked in the identical metropolis.

According to the Bureau, the suspect charged younger farmers and unemployed individuals within the state of Punjab between Rs 25 lakh to Rs 45 (€2,800 to €5,600) in trade for Schengen visas from the Embassy of France, New Delhi. He additionally organized their flights to the United States from France inside a interval of ten days after arrival within the latter.

To date, the French Embassy has not commented on the incident.

CBI’s investigation has resulted in authorized procedures being initiated in opposition to six personal individuals, two of whom have been beforehand workers of the Visa Department of the Embassy of France, New Delhi. The CBI claims that these two individuals have labored with others to fraudulently concern visas in a interval of 4 months, between January 1, 2022 and May 6, 2022.

Amongst the fraudulent acts dedicated by these individuals embrace offering solid letters supposedly written by a non-public firm primarily based at Bengaluru to the Consulate General of France, Bengaluru, for issuing Entry Visas for his or her becoming a member of personal firms in Port-Le-Havre, France.

Related to the case, the CBI has beforehand carried out searches at six areas, together with Delhi, Patiala, Gurdaspur and Jammu on the premises of the accused in December 2022, throughout which it had collected incriminating proof, together with laptops, cellphones, suspicious passports and many others.

India is the third largest supply for Schengen visa applicants for 2002, simply behind Türkiye and the Russian Federation. 671,928 purposes have been filed on the Schengen embassies in India in 2022, 18.3 per cent of which have been rejected.

The highest variety of purposes have been submitted on the French consular authorities in India (138,643), adopted by Switzerland (106,025), and Spain (80,098). Accordingly, France additionally rejected the very best variety of purposes, as many as 27,681, out of the entire 121,188 rejected by the Schengen nations.

Obtaining a visa is usually pricey and time-consuming for candidates. The procedures embrace collecting several documents, paying a Schengen visa fee of €80, buying the right travel insurance, and far more.

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