947 Foreigners Deported during “Cleanup” of Petersburg for Economic Forum

All those utterly disempowered Tajik and Uzbek maintenance workers, janitors, yard sweepers, construction workers, taxi bus drivers, petrol pumpers, car wash wallahs, tire changers, and subway ventilation shaft dwellers (?) apparently threatened to disrupt the mighty Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum.

As a friend of mine commented, “Now we know what ‘strengthening of immigration control’ means. It is telling that the economic forum is used as a pretext to mask the [real] economy itself.”

During “Cleanup” of Petersburg for SPIEF, 947 Foreigners Deported
June 17, 2015
Fontanka.ru

Almost a thousand people have been deported from Russia during a “cleanup” of Petersburg for the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, which starts tomorrow, June 18. Regional units of the Federal Migration Service carried out large-scale raids on apartments and hotels in search of suspicious foreigners.

As Fontanka.ru has learned, the cleanup had been planned several months ago and had been underway since April in eight districts of the city, those that will host SPIEF events. In addition to Vasilyevsky Island, immigration control has been strengthened in the Central, Petrograd, Admiralty, Moscow, Kirov, Krasnoe Selo, and Pushkin districts.

As a result of more than two thousand raids by the regional FMS office, 947 foreigners were expelled and deported for various violations of immigration laws. Simultaneously, more than ninety crimes involving drugs and weapon trafficking, as well as documents forgery, were solved. Nearly six thousand police charge sheets for administrative violations were issued, and the amount of fines imposed on foreigners was in excess of nine million rubles [approx. 147,000 euros].

The FMS’s Petersburg and Leningrad Region office confirmed to Fontanka.ru that the planned actions had been implemented in advance of the SPIEF.

According to the information made available to us, during the cleanup of Vasilyevsky Island, not only were abandoned buildings and buildings under construction checked but so too were taxi bus stands, service stations, tire shops, car washes, and subway ventilation shafts.