People smugglers are using corner shops and other businesses in Britain to take payments for illegal migrants who want to cross the Channel. The Telegraph has more.
A phone shop in south-east London, a wholesale business in Newcastle and a car wash in Cambridge were named as small businesses that could accept bank transfers from immigrants in France or cash from their friends already in the UK.
BBC undercover investigators were told the money would be held by the business until the migrants had successfully crossed the Channel to England. If they did not cross, the businesses were reportedly told by the people smugglers to hand the money back.
The cash-for-crossings agreements were orchestrated by a people smuggler calling himself Ahmad, who also provided details of companies in Europe where payments could be made in cash, including a car wash in Antwerp and a restaurant in Paris.
In France, Ahmad, who spoke Farsi and said he was from Afghanistan, told an undercover BBC researcher they could pay using one of three UK businesses, including a phone shop called Afg Mobile Repair in Woolwich, south-east London.
The crossing would cost £2,700 for two people, he said. At the shop, a man behind the counter said the money would be transferred to the smugglers only after a successful crossing.
He said: “If your people do not cross, if he tells me to return your money back to you, I’ll do it. You can’t count on boats, you never know, God forbid the boat sinks, and all of them [drown].” He denied acting as a conduit for payments. He said: “We don’t move money… we have only phone shop.”
The use of British businesses for Channel-crossing payments was revealed to the BBC by people smugglers operating out of a migrant camp in Dunkirk.
One smuggler, calling himself Zia, said he could book a place on a small-boat crossing and money-exchange shops in the UK could take payments for crossings. He said: “In London, they don’t give you a receipt. They call me to say [they’ve] got the money. When you cross, they transfer to me.”
A tout provided a phone number for Ahmad, the smuggler who had been operating out of northern France for more than five years.
Worth reading in full.
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What a surprise. i never would have guessed that the thousands of unnecessary vape, tattoo, phone accessory and barbers shops were up to no good!
Colour me surprised.
I thought the explosion in cash only “Turkish” Barbers, nail bars, vape shops and food outlets was all perfectly above board and legal.
Loads of dodgy shops in my local town, and even dodgier scruffy, non-white, young men that can’t speak English, hanging around them.
The local council will do nothing to shut these shops down. They may be laundering money, selling illegal substances and evading tax but they are paying their business rates.
The council get money from these shops and see it as a better alternative than them being empty and boarded up.
I also live in Wales that is a ‘Sanctuary Country’ and Plaid and Labour want to help these poor individuals by letting them get away with murder.
…and here I was imagining that all these would-be boat migrants were swanning around in northern France with fat wallets stuffed with Euros looking for a taxi-boat to take them on a one-way day-trip to
BlightyEl Dorado.Of course there’s a different payment method. Either cash from family back home or from family already across the Channel – or self-styled philanthropists.
Stolen smart phones can have some of their software deleted so they can’t be tracked, then sold.
The latest models can be sold for up to the equivalent of $1,500 in China because they don’t have the software that smart phones that are sold legally in China have and can be used to access content the Chinese government doesn’t want be to view.
Most, if not all, people smuggling gangs will be involved in other types of organised crime and will be easily able to get smart phones to China.
The person who stole the phone will get at least half of what it’s worth in China so it won’t take many stolen smart phones to pay for a trip across the Channel.
This is not a Third World Invasion, but an Infestation.
The solution is simple. Close down all corner shops and small businesses: whether they do this kind of thing or not. Then the Obedient Citizenry can shop only in Government-Approved places like supermarkets, which have earned Approved Status by bribing the Government.
Well, that’ll be this Government’s “solution”, anyway.
Next up: ban cash, as it could be used to buy drugs or pay people-smugglers. Next up: how pubs are havens of all kind of Unapproved Activities – close them down as well (oops, my mistake, they’re doing that anyway…).
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No doubt, as a responsible 100% trustworthy organisation, the BBC have passed all their information on to the police and even as I type this these businesses are being raided.
It’s a major step for the BBC to have even published this.
The BBC was told about the businesses that are used by one smuggling gang, presumably each gang will use different businesses. No doubt the business will take a cut and are almost certainly also making money in other illegal ways so this links with the recent story about vape shops being a front for money laundering.
Good lord, how many levels of inbred is that thing in the picture?
It looks like his favourite possession is a large tyre hanging from the ceiling but he’s obviously got enough intelligence to make a decent amount of money from illegal activities.
The picture should be in every mosque as a warning about cousin marriages.
They’re using banks for transfers? Half a million individuals have their accounts arbitrarily closed each year, including our local miniature Shetland sanctuary and, last week, my church. I’ve had my own account temporarily suspended for a perfectly legitimate transaction.
So how come these operations don’t attract the attention of bank fraud departments? Anything to do with social cohesion?
I can’t even deposit money from the local fete without getting the third degree because, money laundering…
I guess the income should be declared on tax returns but the remittance to people smugglers cannot be deducted as a business expense as it is an illegal activity.
Now teh HMRC is free from the onerous task of letting off Angela Rayner maybe they could look into this?
To be fair, one might have thought the council would have noticed a proliferation of Turkish barbers on their High Streets, long before they were obliged to file a tax return…
I am sure they do but Trading Standards never used to deal with anything more controversial than shopkeepers selling out of date cheese or alcohol to kids. Nowadays I expect the criminals running these places might well threaten to kill you or your family. I can see why they might turn a blind eye.
Then they need to escalate it and pass it up the chain, not bury it ‘for the sake of diversity’ like they did with the rape gangs who, ironically, are probably the same people who have got used to getting away with it…
I wonder what percentage of crossings are paid for in this way by people already in the UK and how many are paid for by the illegal immigrant in cash or goods they’ve stolen as they made their way through numerous safe countries.
Or even, how much we’re paying for ourselves by giving them ‘pocket money’? That would be ironic, I suppose…
What a sting by the BBC. An operation so cunning in its implementation that they’ve managed to uncover something known to 99% of the British population for the last ten years.
Yet the Government who vowed to “smash the gangs” appears not to have brought any of these operators to account.