Garda team to visit Latvia for meetings on sham marriages

A team of gardaí are due to travel to Latvia in the next few weeks to liaise with Latvian police in a continuing investigation into sham marriages in the EU, it has been announced.

Latvian officials had raised concerns in the past few months that non-European men seeking residency in the EU were paying Latvian women to marry them.

A spokesman for the Irish Department of Justice last night rejected the claim that the Government had been slow to act in regard to these sham marriages.

He said Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern had consistently raised the issue in Europe and had called for a tightening of EU regulations.