Gang that ‘trafficked hundreds of migrants’ smashed in dawn raids
POLICE say they have smashed a trafficking gang suspected of bringing hundreds of Iraqi Kurds into Britain in the back of lorries for £10,000 each.
A total of 21 suspects, mostly Iraqi Kurdish men, were arrested across the UK in a major operation by 350 officers yesterday.
It followed a year-long investigation involving police in France, Belgium and the Netherlands – where the migrants were brought from.
A total of 20 addresses were raided in Teesside, Hastings in East Sussex, London and the Newcastle area.
The National Crime Agency, which investigates organised crime, said it was one of the biggest operations it has carried out since it launched five years ago.
Those smuggled into the country, using
‘Exploitation of vulnerable people’
drivers recruited on Teesside and abroad, were mainly believed to be Iraqi Kurds the NCA said.
The agency’s deputy director Tom Dowdall said: ‘We believe we have identified and disrupted a significant network which is suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants into the UK and planned to carry on going.’
The smugglers were thought to be charging vulnerable people up to £10,000 each to get across the Channel from northern Europe.
Among those arrested yesterday were a 42-year-old man living in a rented £140,000 terraced house in Linthorpe, Middlesbrough, and another suspect at a £260,000 detached property near Billingham, County Durham.
A neighbour of the Linthorpe property said: ‘He has a wife and a daughter and there’s another young woman there … Sometimes you can hear them arguing inside the house from the other side of the street … He’s in and out all the time but in the two years they’ve been here they haven’t made any friends in the street.’
A total of 16 people were arrested around Teesside, with a further two arrests in London, two in Sussex and one in Northumbria. Those held were aged 22-60.
Spot checks were also carried out on a number of hand car washes to check them for tax and immigration compliance, and health and safety. Senior investigating officer Mark Spoors said: ‘The crime group have used complicit lorry drivers running from France into the UK.
‘Those individuals have all been arrested for immigration offending and linked money laundering and they’ll be questioned … we think today is a significant disruption.’
Mr Dowdall added: ‘The number of officers deployed today reflects the scale and severity of the suspected criminality. It is one of the biggest operations of its kind undertaken by the NCA. People smugglers don’t think twice about putting lives in danger … It is a crime predicated on exploitation of vulnerable people and their treatment as a commodity instead of as human beings.’
The action is part of Project Invigor, a campaign to tackle organised illegal immigration.
A man has been found guilty of attempting to smuggle six Ukrainians into the UK on a yacht.
Vladyslav Kurtoglu, 50, was convicted at Portsmouth crown court of assisting unlawful immigration. His associate Dmytro Kruik, 29, had earlier pleaded guilty to the same offence.
The men, both Ukrainians of no fixed address in the UK, were caught when the boat was stopped by a Border Force patrol near Hayling Island, Hampshire, after sailing from France in May last year.
A search of the yacht found six other Ukrainian men on board who were later removed from the UK. Kurtoglu and Kruik will be sentenced on February 21.