Five British immigration officials appeared in court on Monday on charges of abuse of office and conspiracy to steal money from migrants who arrived in Britain by boat, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
Fifty-three-year-old Jon Bernthal, 45-year-old Ben Edwards, 42-year-old Lee-Ann Evanson, 36-year-old Besmir Matera and 33-year-old Jack Mitchell are accused of stealing from migrants between August 2021 and November 2022.
All five officials have also been charged with one count of abuse of office and one count of money laundering. The accused officers sat in the dock at London's Westminster Magistrates' Court, where prosecutor Rosalind Iris said the five had worked on Britain's southern coast, "dealing with migrants arriving in small boats".
Iris added to the court that "many of these people arrive with relatively large amounts of cash on them". When the defendants learned of this, "they conspired to take the migrants' money for themselves and divide it up," the prosecutor said.
Matera is also charged with entering and remaining in the UK by fraud and possessing three identity documents - a British passport, as well as one permanent and one temporary driving licence, issued to a person with a false identity.
Eris said that Matera applied for asylum in 2003, claiming to be from Kosovo and that he had arrived in the UK by lorry. The prosecutor said that Matera was in fact from Albania and had arrived in the UK on a school trip.
The sixth defendant, 43-year-old David Grundy, faces only one charge - money laundering. All six defendants have been released on bail pending their next hearing at Southwark Crown Court in February. None of them have been asked to plead not guilty or guilty.