Gang ‘transported 10,000 migrants into UK in refrigerated lorries’
Twenty-three people believed to have made over 70 million euro from smuggling people from Europe to the United Kingdom have been arrested in France and The Netherlands.
The French Border Guard and Police Nationale and the Dutch Royal Marechaussee dismantled the criminal network on Tuesday and Wednesday (January 21and 22).
Nineteen people were arrested in France and four in the Netherlands. In five searches, firearms and vehicles were seized and ‘irregular migrants’ were safeguarded, according to Europol.
It is believed the network had facilitated the transportation of around 10,000 Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi-Kurdish and Syrian migrants from the French areas of Le Mans and Poitiers to the UK.
In a statement issued on Thursday (January 23), Europol said the migrants were transported in life-threatening conditions, concealed in refrigerated and often overcrowded lorries.
The migrants are believed to have paid up to 7,000 euro each with payment collected via an undercover hawala banking system run by a suspect based in the Netherlands.
In October, 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in the back of a refrigerated lorry in Grays, Essex. They are believed to have been locked inside the trailer for over ten hours as it made its way from Belgium to the port of Purfleet.
Their families have claimed they paid smugglers as much as £30,000 to transport victims to the UK.
Two men from Northern Ireland, including the driver, have been charged with manslaughter and conspiring to assist unlawful immigration/human trafficking offences.
