If they want to regularize their papers, they must pay between 4,000 and 12,000 euros, otherwise, they are forced to work for several hours in the agricultural fields. Following the “Bomvoyage” operation to detect irregularities in hiring, 13 people were detained for blackmail and exploitation of seasonal workers from Morocco and Senegal in Hellin, in the Albacete region. According to the Spanish media Onda Regional de Murcia (ORM) citing the Guardia Civil, 300 possible cases have been detected in the last three years.
At the beginning, the investigation targeted six other people who were part of an international criminal organization charged with deceiving seasonal workers from Senegal and Morocco, to exploit them as labor. This investigation led to the discovery of the 13 people, explained on Wednesday, July 3, Milagros Tolón, government delegate in Castilla-La Mancha, and Jesús Manuel Rodrigo, colonel in chief of the Albacete command.
According to the Spanish media, the workers, who come from Morocco and Senegal, pay between 4,000 and 6,000 euros to arrive illegally in Spain. They are then recruited in agricultural fields where they live in precarious housing. The salaries are said to be less than 200 euros per month in exchange for “exhausting working hours.”
If they refuse to sign the contract or choose to return to their country of origin, workers must pay between 4,000 and 12,000 euros to regularize their administrative situation. This regularization allows recruiters to deceive the Spanish authorities about the regular entry of these people into the country, thus camouflaging illegal practices.
This organized gang had several actors to facilitate its actions: legal advisers, recruiters in Senegal and Morocco, and managers in Spain… They forced migrants to sign papers whose content they were unaware of to acquire commissions, and rented hotel facilities and isolated farms through contracts at inflated prices, to obtain higher public subsidies.
The inspection and interviews with immigrants made it possible to verify the existence of the incriminated facts.
