The National Police have arrested 36 people who were part of a criminal organization based in Barcelona that is allegedly dedicated to fraudulently obtain diplomas and certificates issued by the Instituto Cervantes.
Agents have also identified 1,667 customers who would have paid to the organization amounts of between 1,000 and 4,500 euros to obtain falsified diplomas and certificates.
As reported this Friday by the police force in a statement, the criminal organization It falsified the oral and written tests of the Cervantes Institute to obtain DELE and CCSE diplomas, necessary requirements for foreign citizens to obtain Spanish nationality by residence.
The arrests have been carried out in an operation coordinated by Europol and developed simultaneously in Spain and United Kingdom, With the collaboration of the Spanish National Police and the British National Crime Agency (NCA).
In the United Kingdom, one of the most important members has been arrested of the network, and the rest have been arrested in the province of Barcelona, including the leader of the network.
Within the framework of the operation, 13 entry and registration procedures, 12 of them in Barcelona, and 50,000 euros in cash, 29 mobile phones, 12 laptops and abundant documentation have been seized, among which there are hundreds of fraudulent diplomas.
The forgeries were made in an academy that offered tests to obtain the DELE and the CCSE, in which the results were falsified for those foreign citizens who lacked the necessary knowledge to be approved.
The director of the center had the help of intermediaries and recruiters with two branches, one Bangladeshi and one Pakistani, so most of the clients were from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.
The agents estimate that the criminal organization would have accumulated revenues of about four million euros, and that of the 1,667 clients identified, some 1,380 would already have the DELE obtained fraudulently.
The National Police has been collaborating since 2018 with the Cervantes Institute for different scams related to DELE diplomas and CCSE certificates, officially issued by that institute under the mandate of the Spanish Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice.
In November 2020, the National Police already carried out a broad device in different provinces with which he arrested 25 people for supplanting the identity of legal resident foreigners during the tests to obtain the DELE.
Thanks to the information obtained in this operation, the investigators have been able to prove the existence of the criminal organization based in Barcelona with ramifications in the United Kingdom that has now dismantled.