Austrian police said they had raided two dozen homes Wednesday, seizing equipment and placing 22 people under investigation on suspicion of forg-ing vaccine certificates, weeks before Covid vac-cines become mandatory.
Investigators suspect the 22 people were forging documents not just for themselves but for friends and acquaintances, the interior ministry said in a statement. “Organised trade and use of forged vaccine cer-tificates is no trivial matter, but a criminal offence,” said Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.
A unit specialising in tracking forged Covid-19 documents was tipped off by the suspects discussing their business on social media, said the statement.
Some 100 police officers involved in the opera-tion confiscated “numerous vaccine certificates, mobile phones and computers”.
They were now being helped in their investiga-tion by the EU police agency Europol. —APP
