Horses Trafficked in Europe With Fake Animal Passports, Police Say

A criminal network created fake horse passports and duplicate microchips to traffic hundreds of animals across Europe, police officials said on Friday, describing a system of animal identity fraud that led horses to slaughter.

Over two days and two dozen searches, the police in Belgium, France, Ireland and the Netherlands checked more than 1,000 horses that may have been fraudulently traded, officials said. The traffickers’ goal, the police said, was to misidentify horses to sell them at different rates — moves such as selling sporting horses to slaughterhouses and presenting older horses as younger and more valuable.

“Investigators suspect that forged horse passports and manipulated microchips were used to effectively give animals new identities,” Europol, the European law enforcement agency, said in a statement.

In an operation across four countries, the police seized “a significant number of horses,” along with 100,000 euros (about $116,000) in cash, the Belgian Federal Police said.

In Belgium, at least two people were arrested. Those arrested were not identified. The Irish, French and Dutch police did not say whether they had made arrests.

Officials said the investigation continued, including efforts to find other people who may have been involved.