Brussels, 13/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 13 November, the anticorruption agency in Lithuania uncovered a network of officials at the Department of Immigration who are suspected of having granted fraudulent residency permits in the EU to around a hundred non-EU citizens.
Seven officials from this department have been arrested and charged as part of an operation jointly carried out with the Lithuanian prosecutor's office. Six other people, including two lawyers, are being investigated in this affair, according to a press statement. As part of the scandal, people seeking to obtain or extend their residency permits in the EU paid money to lawyers working as presumed middlemen. The lawyers then made contact with people who had links with civil servants and who are suspected of accepting bribes, confirmed a press agency. The spokesperson for the prosecutor general's office, Vilma Mazone, informed AFP that around a hundred foreigners had benefited from this illegal procedure. She explained that investigations are focusing on a period of approximately 6 months. The prosecutor's office is not publishing the names of the countries concerned, in an effort to avoid any obstruction to the enquiry. It involves citizens from different countries. Lithuania joined the EU in 2004 and joined the Schengen area of free movement in Europe three years later. (LC/transl.fl)