Croatia's Assistant Police Director Vitomir Bijelic told a news conference in Zagreb on Saturday that a police investigation into the Croatian passports fraud established that Croatian passports had been forged in the way not detected before in the region.
Holding the news briefing after the arrest of six Croatians suspected of being involved in the passport forgery, the police official said that the suspects used to steal the identity of Croatian nationals of Serb background living outside Croatia who had not yet applied for Croatian passports and their identity was used in the passports with photos of those passport holders, who were not eligible for Croatian passports but obtained those documents in that unlawful manner.
The mastermind in this passport forgery ring that supplied Balkan mobsters with Croatian travel documents is a 58-year-old man who has Croatian citizenship and lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
So far, 53 counterfeit passports have been found in the police investigation, and 50 more are believed to have been distributed. The alleged passport counterfeiters could "earn" more than a half million euros this way.
Bijelic said that this "atypical" forgery could not have been detected before the beginning of the issuance of electronic passports on 1 October 2010.
The six Croatian suspects -- two police officers, a Croatian Interior Ministry employee, two staff members from the Croatian Consulate in the northeastern Bosnian city of Tuzla, and another individual -- were taken into custody on Saturday.
According to Bijelic, they are old between 31 and 58, and three of them are women.
Apart from the six suspects, a Serbian citizen and another suspect, whose identity has not yet been established, are believed to have been involved. The Croatian authorities issued an international warrant for the arrest of the Serbian national.
