Sham marriage

It's a great day for Kevi, a young waiter at a cafe that's popular among the diplomats working at the foreign embassies flanking Skenderbeu Street in downtown Tirana.

Europol's Operational Task Force (OTF) in Limassol, Cyprus uncovered a criminal network orchestrating sham marriages in Cyprus for irregular migration into the EU on Monday.

The investigation suggested that the criminal network was also involved in human trafficking and money laundering activities, as well as forcing victims into bogus marriages for immigration purposes.

Cyprus is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union, the country's interior minister said Wednesday.

An accountant, a lawyer and four notaries stand accused of running a network in Athens that helped numerous undocumented migrants gain legal status in Greece through sham weddings and falsified paternity claims, police said Friday.

Last week two women from Bulgaria were jailed after being flown from their native country to Manchester to marry Pakistani men facing deportation, reports The Telegraph. 

Nadya Kamenova, 20, and Temenuzhka Slavcheva, 21, were recruited by sham marriage organisers on Skype and agreed to marry the men, one of whose student visas had been rescinded.