According to the Finnish Border Guard, thousands of air passengers traveled last year using stolen passports. They point out that the use of self-service check-in procedures within Europe has made it much easier for this type of fraud to proliferate.
“Especially within the Schengen area -- which is effectively inside Europe -- there is no requirement to check a passenger's travel documents, including passports or other forms of identification,” said chief inspector Auli Kankkunen of the Transport Safety Agency.
On the other hand, border officials are highly vigilant when it comes to monitoring passengers traveling beyond Europe’s borders. Airlines in particular have a clear motivation: they face a penalty for allowing passengers to travel with inadequate or fraudulent travel documents.
Thousands of passports in the wrong hands
Last year there were 80 cases in Finland in which airline passengers used either forged or stolen passports – the actual number who managed to escape detection is not known.
Passports stolen from Finns are often used in places such as Africa and South America.
“The trend globally for many years has been to resort to impersonation, or to travel posing as another person using their travel documents,” said Major Ilkka Herranen of the Finnish Border Guard.
Passports are an increasingly attractive target for theft because forgery has become more difficult due to the use of bio-recognition techniques.
“This is a completely global phenomenon. This happens around the world and these kinds of facilities where passports are made or sold exist around the world. So far they have not been found here in Finland,” Herranen added.
Malaysian Airlines case could tighten surveillance
Reports that two passengers on board a Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared last weekend were using stolen pasports could lead to closer vigilance over passengers’ travel documents – if it emerges that there is a connection between these passengers and the fate of the aircraft.
“Supervision can always be tightened but we must remember that in this case the documents had been reported stolen to Interpol. But what is not known is whether the Interpol system had been used at the airport of departure. We use it at all of our border crossings,” Herranen concluded.