Police rescue 33 West Africans from a human trafficking scam in Ivory Coast

Police raids have rescued 33 West Africans from a human trafficking ring in Ivory Coast that lured people into paying fees and providing coerced labour by promising them jobs in Canada, the international police agency Interpol said Tuesday.

Victims paid as much as $9,000 to supposed recruiters who instead trafficked them to the city of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, where they were held under physical and psychological coercion, the agency said in a statement.

They were also forced to help scam others with the same promise of finding a job abroad by taking photos of themselves in upscale restaurants and hotels and posting them online as though they were in Canada. The traffickers allowed them limited contact with their families to maintain the illusion of living overseas.

The initial raids on two of the locations associated with the trafficking ring were conducted in February in a joint operation between Ivory Coast and Ghana, where some of the victims were from.

The scheme first came to light when the father of two victims came forward to Ghanaian authorities. Victims were from Benin, Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana.

Youssouf Kouyate, director general of the Ivory Coast National Police, commended the “close cooperation” with Ghanaian police and Interpol, as well as “the bravery of the victims who came forward to assist in this investigation.”

After the 33 victims were freed, they were referred to a nongovernmental organisation for assessment, the Interpol statement said.

Scams of this type are increasingly common in West Africa, and police forces across the region have conducted mass raids in the past, including the arrest of over 300 people in 2024.

Interpol, which has 196 member countries, works to help national police forces communicate with each other and track suspects and criminals in fields like counterterrorism, financial crime, child pornography, cybercrime and organised crime.