The ruthless gangs behind a £6bn a year trail of misery

MORE than 600,000 migrants have reached Italy by sea from Libya since 2014, with 12,000 dying during the crossing.

Every stage of this involves criminals – Europol estimates people-smuggling is worth £6 billion a year to Arab and North African criminal gangs.

For extortionate fees, they shepherd migrants from Chad, Eritrea or Niger – not to mention Bangladesh and Pakistan – to Libya, and then send them out to sea, either to drown or to be picked up and deposited in Italy, where the Mafia get involved.

In Italy’s Calabria, the powerful and violent ’Ndrangheta has siphoned off £36 million from more than £90 million disbursed in aid to migrant reception centres.

The less powerful Sicilian Cosa Nostra has come to an arrangement with Nigerian gangs in return for a cut of money they earn from drugs and prostitution in the island’s capital Palermo. Now a third group of criminals has joined the feast, except this time in an effort to stop migration at source in Libya – which explains why the numbers of migrants fell dramatically by 50 per cent in July and then by 86 per cent in August.

Italy is the only European government with close connections with the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli. They have used this connection to operate a crafty sleight of hand, which enables Italy to pay money to the Libya’s ministries of defence and interior.

This is, in turn, disbursed to two militias which control the Libyan town of Sabratha, a major centre for people-smuggling.

Their role, for which they are generously paid, is to intimidate local smugglers and to run jails in which would-be migrants are confined.

The Italians have also imposed restrictions on the humanitarian charities which, they say, are acting like an offshore taxi service for people-smugglers.

Finally, the Italians have joined the French, Germans and Spanish in paying the governments of Chad and Niger to beef up their own border controls, something which seems to have worked with Niger’s neighbour Burkina Faso.

The Italians’ pragmatic approach appears to be working – for them at least.

The human-traffickers are said to be moving to Morocco, from where there has been a sudden spike in people-smuggling to Spain.