(http://img.yle.fi/uutiset/helsinki/article6205728.ece/ALTERNATES/w580/)
Police in Kosovo have launched an investigation into a large-scale case of forgeries, including Finnish passports. Finnish police say they have no information about the details of the investigation.
Detective Chief Inspector Kari Siivo of the National Bureau of Investigation said that Finnish police received word of the confiscated documents from Nordic liaison police.
The crime ring uncovered by the Kosovo police had created thousands of counterfeit EU passports, visas and driving permits. Some of the forged documents included Finnish, Slovenian, Czech and German passports.
All investigations and communications regarding the case now fall to the Kosovo police. Finland has not made any official or legal requests concerning the case.
Siivo said further action by Finnish police would depend on whether or not the investigators in Kosovo seek to determine the final destination of the forged documents and how they were meant to be used. One option is that the passports were meant for illegal immigrants trying to enter the Schengen area from outside Europe.
The NBI seldom receives queries about forged passports from abroad, nor do the police have precise information about the number of bogus travel documents that might be circulating in Finland.
According to Siivo, there have only been a few isolated cases in which travelers from the Balkan region have tried to enter Finland with suspicious passports.
Yle