Vienna Airport Security Staff Caught Smuggling Refugees to US, UK

Austrian police have busted a criminal gang run by private security staff in Vienna airport who had smuggled refugees onto planes bound for Britain and the United States, a spokesman from the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Korneuburg Prosecution Office’s spokesman Friedrich Koehl said the case had been under investigation for about three months, according to Austria’s Kurier newspaper.

Two suspected smugglers – a Sri Lankan and a Pole – have been in pre-trial detention since late February, while four others have been released.

British private security firm G4S has admitted that one of its employees had been involved in the smuggling scheme, and had been "immediately fired," it said in a statement.

Security employees at Vienna’s Schwechat airport abused their "official position" and knowledge of safety controls to smuggle refugees, who were mostly Sri Lankans, through security checks.

They helped illegal immigrants board US- and UK-bound planes in exchange for rewards of between 7,000 and 9,000 euro ($7,600-$9,800) per person, Koehl added.

The human traffickers issued flight tickets and US travel permits to their friends who then checked into the flight and passed security controls. Security officers then sneaked the migrants in through a backdoor and swapped the tickets "in the loo," the Kurier quoted police as saying.

Austrian police said this case had alarmed the US Homeland Security Department, which expressed concern that the same security loopholes could be used by terrorists planning to sneak into the United States. Security controls at US and EU airports were tightened in the wake of the 2011 bombings in New York and Washington.