UK imposes first-ever sanctions on people-smuggling networks in global crackdown
The United Kingdom has imposed its first-ever sanctions targeting irregular migration, hitting 25 individuals and entities at the heart of people-smuggling networks that drive illegal migration to Britain, the Foreign Office announced Wednesday.
The sanctions target gang ringleaders, key intermediaries and suppliers of people-smuggling equipment under the world’s first dedicated sanctions regime specifically designed to combat irregular migration and organised immigration crime.
The designations cover a range of activities from supplying small boats explicitly for smuggling to sourcing fake passports, middlemen facilitating illicit payments through informal Hawala money transfer networks, people-smuggling via lorries and small boats, and the gangland leaders themselves.
‘This is a landmark moment in the government’s work to tackle organised immigration crime, reduce irregular migration to the UK and deliver on the Plan for Change,’ Foreign Secretary David Lammy said. ‘From Europe to Asia we are taking the fight to the people-smugglers who enable irregular migration, targeting them wherever they are in the world and making them pay for their actions.’
Among those sanctioned is Bledar Lala, an Albanian who controls the ‘Belgium operations’ of an organised criminal group which smuggles migrants from Belgium across the English Channel to the United Kingdom. The UK also sanctioned a Chinese company, Weihai Yamar Outdoors Product Co, ‘over the manufacture of inflatable boats being advertised for people smuggling’.
Alen Basil, a former police translator who became the leader of a large smuggling network in Serbia, was designated for terrorising refugees with the aid of corrupt policemen. Basil was found to be living in a house in Serbia worth more than €1 million, bought with money extorted from desperate migrants.
Also sanctioned is Mohammed Tetwani, the self-styled ‘King of Horgos’, who brutally oversaw a migrant camp in Horgos, Serbia and led the Tetwani people-smuggling gang. Tetwani and his followers are known for their violent treatment of refugees who decline their services or cannot pay for them.
The sanctions package includes individuals like Muhammed Khadir Pirot, a hawala banker involved in informal money transfer networks that people-smugglers use to take payment from migrants.
‘My message to the gangs who callously risk vulnerable lives for profit is this: we know who you are, and we will work with our partners around the world to hold you to account,’ Lammy said.
All those sanctioned are publicly named and barred from engaging with the UK financial system, with their assets frozen and travel banned to Britain. The measures can disrupt the flow of money and materials that allow organised criminal gangs to operate people-smuggling operations.
National Crime Agency Director General Graeme Biggar said the sanctions powers complement NCA activity in targeting criminal networks. ‘They will give the UK a new way of pursuing, undermining and frustrating the operational capability of a wide range of organised immigration crime networks, including those who facilitate or enable offending,’ he said.
The designations include Iraqi-linked people-smugglers who stowed migrants in refrigerated lorries crossing the English Channel, members of North African gangs operating in the Balkans including the violent Kazawi and Tetwani gangs, and Balkan criminal organisations supplying fake passports including the Kavač and Škaljari gangs.
The Global Irregular Migration Sanctions Regime empowers the Foreign Office to impose sanctions not only on individuals and entities involved in people-smuggling to the UK, but also any financiers and companies found to be enabling their activities.
Today’s announcement is part of the Foreign Office’s three-pronged ‘disrupt, deter, return’ strategy to tackle irregular migration globally.
It was not possible to reach the persons or entities named by the Foreign Office.
