The number of foreigners attempting to pass through Copenhagen Airport charged with passport fraud has more than tripled in the past five years from 74 in 2010 to 255 last year, Metroxpress reports.

These figures include both cases of people using fake documents and attempting to pass off another person’s passport as their own.

Varying sophistication
René Therming, the head of the police document unit at Copenhagen Airport, sees a correlation between the increase in this type of case and the recent influx of refugees and is aware of varying levels of sophistication.

“We are seeing it both in cases with people coming to Denmark to seek asylum and in cases where asylum-seekers have been refused asylum in Denmark or another Schengen country and then try to travel on to other countries like Britain, Canada and the USA via the airport,” he said.

“Some of it is easily detectable with the naked eye. But other times we need to put it under a microscope and special equipment to reveal it.”

DF: more police attention needed
Peter Skaarup, the legal affairs spokesperson and deputy chairman of Dansk Folkeparti, wants a bigger police presence at the airport to deal with the problem.

“We must take this very seriously. It is well known that economic migrants, people smugglers and – in the worst cases terrorists – attempt to exploit documents to gain entry to Europe and thereby Denmark.”

“At the same time the numbers highlight that we need to increase police staffing at the airport so that we can control who we let in.”