Smuggler van caught masked as Daugavpils public transport minibus

Having previously created  fake border guard vehicles and even  fake firewood delivery trucks to transport illegal border crossers into the European Union from Belarus, people smugglers have now been caught using a minibus pretending to be a public transport vehicle from Latvia’s second-largest city, Daugavpils.

On the evening of April 10, after a chase in Svariņi parish, a person transporting people who had illegally crossed the state border was detained in a fake “Daugavpils autobusu parka” (Daugavpils bus depot, DAP) minibus. The vehicle had fake license plates and was emblazoned with the DAP logo, making it look at a glance just like a real public transport vehicle, the State Border Guard said.

On Thursday evening, a suspicious person was reported in the parish of Bērziņi in the Krāslava municipality. During the verification of the information received, a white Mercedes-Benz minibus was found on the side of the road between Šķaune and Porečje. The driver of the vehicle did not react to the request of the border guards to produce documents and left the scene in a hurry.

After a chase of approximately 10 minutes, the man abandoned the vehicle in the village of Svariņi and tried to flee, but without success.

Almost at the same time, a second person, a Somali citizen who had illegally crossed the Latvian-Belarusian border was detected.

Criminal proceedings were initiated against the driver, a Ukrainian citizen, for attempting to provide illegal immigrants with an opportunity to stay illegally in the Republic of Latvia, administrative proceedings were initiated for disobeying the legal requirements of border guards and staying in Latvia without a valid travel document, while the Somali citizen was prevented from crossing the state border illegally.

According to the information available to the State Border Guard, a group of a few dozen persons planning to cross the state border illegally had gathered on the Belarusian side, and the minibus had been specially prepared for the movement of these persons.