UK-registered firms linked to payments for small-boat crossings, BBC finds

People smugglers are directing migrants to pay for illegal Channel crossings using a network of UK-registered businesses, a BBC investigation has found.

We secretly filmed staff at a shop in south-east London telling an undercover researcher that nearly £3,000 in cash could be deposited with them and sent to a smuggler in France.

"You put your money here. If your friends reach [the UK], you shouldn't come back," we were told at the mobile phone store in Woolwich.

Our three-month investigation gives insight into how smugglers appear to be using UK companies' bank accounts to facilitate small-boat crossings - something a leading expert in criminal finance told us he had not seen before.

Our findings suggest a "brazen attitude" by smugglers, says Tom Keatinge, from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) security think tank.

"It is a concern that... people feel sufficiently confident they can be out in the open."

As well as the phone shop, the smuggler in France provided the bank account details of two UK-registered companies, which he said could both take electronic transfers for migrant crossings.

One is a wholesale business in Newcastle upon Tyne, the other is a car wash in Cambridgeshire.

The smuggler, who called himself Ahmad, also provided details of several businesses in Europe where payments could be made in cash, including a car wash in Antwerp, Belgium, and a restaurant in Paris, France.

He also shared bank details of several individuals in the UK and mainland Europe who, he said, could receive payments.

'When you cross, they transfer to me'

We sent an undercover researcher, posing as a migrant trying to cross the Channel illegally with his child, into a migrant camp in Dunkirk.

Known as "the jungle", the camp is a scrubby patch of land beside a road and a railway line. It is where many migrants live in tents before attempting to cross the Channel. When our researcher visited, sections of the camp were underwater after weeks of rain.

Within minutes of arriving, men approached and appeared to be touting for rival gangs. We ended up making contact with two separate smugglers.

One tout took the researcher to meet a smuggler who called himself Zia and said he could book a place on a small boat crossing - a journey referred to as the "game" by smugglers.

Money exchange shops in the UK could take payment for the crossing, said Zia, although he did not specify which ones.

"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."

The second tout we met gave us the phone number of the smuggler Ahmad, who had been operating out of northern France for more than five years, we were told.

On the phone, Ahmad - who spoke Farsi and said he was from Afghanistan - told the undercover researcher they could pay via one of three UK businesses, including at a shop called Afg Mobile Repair in Woolwich.

The crossing would cost £2,700 for two people, he said.

Back in the UK, we then visited the south-east London phone shop on three occasions, secretly filming conversations with two shop workers.

This time, an undercover researcher posed as a UK-based family member of a migrant attempting to cross the Channel.

One man explained from behind the counter that the money would be transferred to the smugglers only after a successful crossing.

"If your people do not cross, if he tells me to return your money back to you, I'll do it," although he acknowledged that a safe crossing could not be guaranteed.

"You can't count on boats, you never know, God forbid the boat sinks, and all of them [drown]."

We did not hand over any cash.

When we returned later to confront the man, he denied moving money for people smugglers.

"We don't move money… we have only phone shop," he said.

The mobile phone shop, and the other two UK firms we investigated, are all listed at Companies House, the government's official registry of businesses.

We verified that Ahmad had given us correct bank details for both the Newcastle and Cambridgeshire firms.

Our findings suggest smugglers are untroubled by the efforts the government has made to try to "smash the gangs", says Keatinge, founding director of Rusi's Centre for Finance and Security.

The government has made it a priority to "break" the business model of the people-smuggling gangs.

But recent cases suggest authorities have struggled to recover the millions of pounds generated by the smuggling trade each year before it leaves the UK.

In April, two people smugglers were jailed in Cardiff for organising the illegal entry of hundreds of migrants, but little of the profits they made could be traced.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) says the pair had very few assets in the UK and most of the money had been transferred to the offenders' home country, Iraq.

Authorities have recovered 10% of the money found to have been made by convicted people smugglers since 2020, according to figures from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) obtained by the BBC.

In that time, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, courts ruled that 45 people smugglers convicted in the UK had made more than £16m from their crimes - a figure known as the "criminal benefit".

But judges issued confiscation orders totalling only £2.9m, based on assets that authorities were able to identify as linked to the crimes. As of February, £1.6m had been recovered.

The CPS says people smugglers are "only in it for the money" and it works to deprive them of their profits "wherever possible".

However - referring to the confiscation orders totalling £2.9m - the CPS added that it was "only able to obtain assets which are available at the time".

Confronted on the phone by our undercover researcher, Ahmad denied any involvement in people smuggling. Zia did not respond to repeated requests to comment.

The owner of the Newcastle wholesale business said they "strongly reject any suggestion that we have knowingly or negligently enabled criminal activity" and promised to co-operate fully with authorities.

The Cambridgeshire car wash did not respond to our request for comment.

Tackling the criminal networks behind people smuggling remains a top priority and the NCA is devoting more resources to it than ever, says the agency's deputy director Dan Cannatella-Barcroft.

There are about 100 active NCA investigations into the "top tier of gangs and individuals involved", he adds. "We are in no doubt that we are making the UK a more difficult place for them to target and operate in."

Migration minister Mike Tapp MP told us there is "a lot of investigative work that goes on behind the scenes", in part, looking at money transfers.

Asked about smuggler Ahmad's use of UK-registered companies' bank accounts, Tapp says he would "love to see more" of the results of our investigation but could not "go into any detail on that".

Criminal gangs are agile and continuously changing their methods, he says, and "it's important we keep up with that and we're continuously pressing for that".

Additional reporting by Victoria Archer