Nearly a hundred visa applications have been blocked from the Belgian consulate in Rabat, due to work visa fraud. The people concerned all wanted to go to Belgium to work in Flanders, but irregularities alerted the consular services.
While the case should only concern Turkey where hundreds of fraudulent files were discovered, dozens of similar files were also found in Morocco, according to the office of the Flemish Minister of Labor, Jo Brouns.
These blocked suspicious requests number 80 in Morocco and 200 in Turkey, and the facts date back to last summer.
The consulates reported these suspected cases of fraud to the Belgian federal government, but the report to the Foreign Office and the Flemish Ministry of Labor was delayed until October.
Currently research is being carried out to find out if it is a network of smugglers who take people for fake contracts to Belgium.
The suspicions relate to an abusive technique used when a profession cannot find workers in Belgium to recruit abroad outside the European Union. The smugglers would have used this “combined permit” for false recruitment.
Other irregularities have recently been observed in the context of visa services for European countries in Morocco. Networks of fraudulent intermediaries who charge Moroccan travelers sums of up to 5,000 dirhams just to be able to have a Visa appointment.
The Italian Embassy was the first to react by announcing the termination of its contract with the service provider TLS Contact for the issuance of visas in Morocco and the change to VF Worldwide.