Fake European job offers and illegal recruitment from India, where to complain

The public advisory of the Ministry of External Affairs records that unregistered recruiting agents are collecting between 2 and 5 lakh rupees in the name of overseas jobs, against a legal ceiling of 30,000 rupees plus 18 percent GST. The same advisory gives three routes for a complaint: the MADAD portal, the Pravasi Bharatiya Sahayata Kendra toll free number 1800 11 3090, and the office of the Protector General of Emigrants.

The ministry also states that recruiting without registration breaches the Emigration Act 1983 and is treated as human trafficking, a punishable offence. The destinations the advisory names specifically include Eastern Europe, the Gulf, Central Asia, Israel, Canada, Myanmar and Laos. Eastern Europe appearing on that list is itself the signal that this corridor is now on the fraud map.

The signs that are visible before any payment

The language of the fraud repeats itself. In the table below, the left column is what the offer says and the right column is what the rule says.

The first line is the most useful, because that lie is verifiable. No member of the European Union appears on the ECR list published on the ministry's Emigration Abroad for Employment page. An agent charging for that clearance for Europe is selling a service that does not exist. How to check the agent is set out in eMigrate registration and checking a recruiting agent.

If you have already arrived in Europe

There is a point here that rarely gets explained. Where a worker is found working without a valid permit, European Union law puts the penalty on the employer and gives the worker a right to unpaid wages. Article 6 of Directive 2009/52/EC requires the employer to pay outstanding remuneration, and the same article presumes an employment relationship of at least three months unless the employer or the worker proves otherwise.

For seasonal work, Article 25 of Directive 2014/36/EU opens the complaint route, allowing a worker to complain directly or through a third party, and protecting a complainant against dismissal. How that check runs on the employer side is set out in right to work verification checks.

The mistake that weakens the complaint

A real pattern. A worker pays 2,60,000 rupees, the conversation happens only on WhatsApp, and the offer letter carries a company name with no address and no registration number. The visa never arrives. The complaint now has three weaknesses: the proof of payment is incomplete, the agent was operating under somebody else's RC number, and the company named does not exist in the destination country's business register.

All three can be checked in fifteen minutes before any payment. Look up the agent on the Active RA List, look up the company in that country's public business register, and send every rupee through a bank. A complaint is strong only when it runs against a registered entity, because that entity is the one holding a 50 lakh rupee bank guarantee. The legal ceiling on charges is set out in the recruitment service charge, and the procedure on the employer side is described on the employers page.