Woman punished in scheme to smuggle 7 Vietnamese into UK
A woman was handed a 30-month suspended sentence at a Hanoi court on January 12 for trying to smuggle seven Vietnamese to the UK with other people's passports.
Nguyen Kim Xuan, 42, was accused of organizing illegal migration activities.
The indictment said Xuan met a group of British citizens in Ha Long in early 2011 and the latters asked her to find Vietnamese people to send to the UK. They promised to pay her US$2,500 for each person. It is not clear why they needed Vietnamese people.
In July that year, she and a Vietnamese man named Tuan brought seven Vietnamese to Thailand and Malaysia, where the British accomplices gave them British passports.
Then the seven people returned Vietnam to fly to the UK.
They were arrested at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City where customs officers found they were traveling with other people’s passports.
Xuan turned herself in last August while Tuan is still at large.