(Reuters) – Around 160 people who applied for asylum at Finland’s eastern border last year have since gone missing, the Finnish Immigration Service said, amid a surge in asylum seekers arriving via Russia.
Finland closed its eastern border with Russia late last year amid an increase in the number of people entering the country from countries such as Syria and Somalia. The government has accused Moscow of herding migrants at the border, an allegation the Kremlin denies.
According to Migri, the immigration agency, there were 1,323 asylum applications at the eastern border between August and December last year, of which around 900 were in November and more than 300 in December.
There are currently 160 people missing from reception centers, most of whom are unaccounted for, Antti Lehtinen, head of Migri’s asylum unit, told Reuters.
Eighteen people also appeared in other European countries to reapply their asylum claims, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany and Switzerland.
“Of course, most of these 160 people may continue to migrate to another country, but they have not yet applied for asylum in that country,” Lehtinen said.
All asylum seekers in Finland have their fingerprints captured in Europe’s shared fingerprint database, the Eurodac system, Lehtinen added.
Under EU rules, the EU member state where a migrant first applies for asylum is responsible for processing the application.
In early January, Finland extended its border closure with Russia until February 11, saying the influx of asylum seekers was likely to resume once the border opened.
Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö last year called for an EU-wide solution to stop uncontrolled entry into Europe’s passport-free Schengen area.
On Thursday, the Finnish Border Guard’s Coast Guard announced that it was investigating several cases of “aiding and abetting illegal migration” linked to the eastern border on suspicion of large-scale human smuggling by criminal organizations.
“Smuggling operations are taking advantage of border security disruptions at the eastern border,” the agency said in a statement.
“We suspect that at least several hundred people are planning to continue their journey from Finland to other EU and Schengen countries,” Coast Guard investigation team chief Antti Rasina told Reuters.
(Reporting by Greta Rosen Fondern; Editing by Anne Kaulanen and Sharon Singleton)
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