Britons buying cocaine on a Friday night could be inadvertently funding Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The National Crime Agency has revealed a billion-dollar money laundering network is operating in 28 towns and cities across the UK.

Couriers collect “dirty” cash generated from drugs, firearms and immigration gangs, which is then converted into cryptocurrency.

Officials say these illicit transactions have a direct link to “geopolitical events causing suffering around the world”.

This network was first exposed because of Operation Destabilise – and to date, 128 arrests have been made, with more than £25m in cash and digital assets seized.

According to the NCA, the enterprise is so prolific that it purchased a bank to facilitate payments that supported Russia’s military efforts and helped sidestep sanctions.

Posters have been put up in motorway service stations to target couriers, which warn it is “just a matter of time” before they will be arrested.

The NCA’s deputy director for economic crime, Sal Melki, has warned the threat posed by this money laundering network is significant.

He added: “Cash couriers play an intrinsic role in this global scheme. They are in our communities and making the criminal ecosystem function – because if you cannot profit from your crimes, why bother.

“They are paid very little for the risks they take and face years in prison, while those they work for enjoy huge profits.”

Mr Melki went on to warn that “easy money leads to hard time” – and earning just a few hundred pounds through laundering could lead to years behind bars.

The NCA says Operation Destabilise has already had an impact in criminal circles, with some members of the network now reluctant to operate in London.

Those involved in the money laundering effort have also started to charge higher fees – reflecting the difficulty of cleaning ill-gotten gains.

Cryptocurrencies are often regarded as a haven for criminals because they are perceived to be anonymous, but it is possible to trace these transactions.

Chainalysis is a company that monitors suspicious activity on blockchains, a type of database that keeps records of who sends and receives digital assets – as well as how much.

Its vice president of communications Madeleine Kennedy told Sky News: “Public blockchains are transparent by design, which makes cryptocurrencies a poor vehicle for money laundering.

“With the right tools, law enforcement can trace illicit funds – whether they’re connected to drug trafficking, sanctions evasion, or cybercrime – and use those insights to disrupt networks and recover assets.”

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Last December, a global investigation led by the NCA smashed two networks whose money laundering activities were prevalent in 30 countries.

Bundles of cash were seized during raids, with detectives describing Smart and TGR as the invisible link between “Russian elites, crypto-rich cybercriminals and drug gangs in the UK”.

One of the network’s ringleaders, a Russian national called Ekatarina Zhdanova, is currently in custody in France and awaiting trial for separate financial offences.

Security minister Dan Jarvis added: “This complex operation has exposed the corrupt tactics Russia used to avoid sanctions and fund its illegal war in Ukraine.

“We are working tirelessly to detect, disrupt and prosecute anyone engaging in activity for a hostile foreign state. It will never be tolerated on our streets.”

Households and businesses will have to wait for energy bills to fall significantly because “there’s no shortcut” to bringing down prices, the energy minister has told Sky News.

Speaking as Chancellor Rachel Reeves considers ways of easing the pressure on households in next week’s budget, energy minister Michael Shanks conceded that Labour’s election pledge to cut bills by £300 by converting the UK to clean power has not been delivered.

It comes as the energy regulator Ofgem is set to announce its latest price cap this morning. Analysts expect the cap, which currently sits at £1,755 per year, to fall by 1% for a typical household – leaving energy bills still 35% higher than pre-Ukraine war levels.

The UK has the second-highest domestic and the highest industrial electricity prices among developed nations, despite renewable sources providing more than 50% of UK electricity last year.

“The truth is, we do have to build that infrastructure in order to remove the volatility of fossil fuels from people’s bills,” Mr Shanks said.

“We obviously hope that that will happen as quickly as possible, but there’s no shortcut to this, and there’s not an easy solution to building the clean power system that brings down bills.”

His comments come amid growing scepticism about the compatibility of cutting bills as well as carbon emissions, and growing evidence that the government’s pursuit of a clean power grid by 2030 is contributing to higher bills.

While wholesale gas prices have fallen from their peak following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, energy bills remain around 35% higher than before the war, inflated by the rising cost of reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

The price of subsidising offshore wind and building and managing the grid has increased sharply, driven by supply chain inflation and the rising cost of financing major capital projects.

In response, the government has had to increase the maximum price it will pay for offshore wind by more than 10% in the latest renewables auction, and extend price guarantees from 15 years to 20.

The auction concludes early next year, but it’s possible it could see the price of new wind power set higher than the current average wholesale cost of electricity, primarily set by gas.

Renewable subsidies and network costs make up more than a third of bills and are set to grow. The cost of new nuclear power generation will be added to bills from January.

The government has also increased so-called social costs funded through bills, including the warm home discount, a £150 payment made to around six million of the least-affluent households.

Gas remains central to the UK’s power network, with around 50 active gas-fired power stations underpinning an increasingly renewable grid, and is also crucial to pricing.

Because of the way the energy market works, wholesale gas sets the price for all sources of electricity, the majority of the time.

At Connah’s Quay, a gas-fired power station run by the German state-owned energy company Uniper on the Dee estuary in north Wales, four giant turbines, each capable of powering 300,000 homes, are fired up on demand when the grid needs them.

Energy boss: Remove policy costs from bills

Because renewables are intermittent, the UK will need to maintain and pay for a full gas network, even when renewables make up the majority of generation, and we use it a fraction of the time.

“The fundamental problem is we cannot store electricity in very large volumes, and so we have to have these plants ready to generate when customers need it,” says Michael Lewis, chief executive of Uniper.

“You’re paying for hundreds of hours when they are not used, but they’re still there and they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

He agrees that shifting away from gas will ultimately reduce costs, but there are measures the government can take in the short term.

“We have quite a lot of policy costs on our energy bills in the UK, for instance, renewables incentives, a warm home discount and other taxes. If we remove those from energy bills and put them into general taxation, that will have a big dampening effect on energy prices, but fundamentally it is about gas.”

The chancellor is understood to be considering a range of options to cut bills in the short term, including shifting some policy costs and green levies from bills into general taxation, as well as cutting VAT.

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Tories and Reform against green energy

Stubbornly high energy bills have already fractured the political consensus on net zero among the major parties.

Under Kemi Badenoch, the Conservatives have reversed a policy introduced by Theresa May. Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho, who held the post in the last Conservative government, explained why: “Net zero is now forcing people to make decisions which are making people poorer. And that’s not what people signed up to.

“So when it comes to energy bills, we know that they’re going up over the next five years to pay for green levies.

“We are losing jobs to other countries, industry is going, and that not only is a bad thing for our country, but it also is a bad thing for climate change.”

Reform UK, meanwhile, have made opposition to net zero a central theme.

“No more renewables,” says Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice. “They’ve been a catastrophe… that’s the reason why we’ve got the highest electricity prices in the developed world because of the scandal and the lies told about renewables.

“They haven’t made our energy cheaper, they haven’t brought down the bills.”

Mr Shanks says his opponents are wrong and insists renewables remain the only long-term choice: “The cost of subsidy is increasing because of the global cost of building things, but it’s still significantly cheaper than it would be to build gas.

“And look, there’s a bigger argument here, that we’re all still paying the price of the volatility of fossil fuels. And in the past 50 years, more than half of the economic shocks this country’s faced have been the direct result of fossil fuel crises across the world.”

They’ve been billed as the “most sweeping asylum reforms in modern times” and the “biggest shake-up of the legal migration system” in nearly 50 years, but how are the UK’s rules actually changing?

One of the biggest changes will impact almost two million migrants already living in the UK while other proposals will affect people who come here in the future.

Here’s how…

How is ‘settled status’ changing?

Until now, migrants who live in the UK have needed to wait five years before they can apply to settle permanently but this qualifying period will double to 10 years – and some people could have to wait even longer.

Almost two million migrants will be affected by the changes.

Those “making a strong contribution to British life” will benefit from a reduced timeframe.

That means doctors and nurses working in the NHS will be able to settle after five years, while high earners and entrepreneurs may able to stay after just three years.

Migrants who speak English to a high standard and volunteer could also have a faster route to settlement.

At the other end of the scale, low-paid workers will be subject to a 15-year wait.

With this, the government is explicitly targeting the 616,000 people and their dependents who came to the UK on health and social care visas between 2022 and 2024 – the so-called “Boriswave”.

The government is going further still in targeting migrants who rely on benefits, quadrupling the current wait to 20 years.

There are also plans to limit benefits and social housing to British citizens only.

And though recognised refugees who came to the UK legally will still be eligible for public funding, they too will be subject to the 20-year timeframe.

How will asylum rules change?

Inspired by immigration policy in Denmark, refugee status will become temporary, lasting only until it’s safe for the person in question to return home.

This means that asylum seekers will be granted leave to remain for 30 months, instead of the current five years, with the period only extendable if they still face danger in their homeland.

However, refugees will be eligible to settle sooner if they get a job or enter education “at an appropriate level” under a new “work and study” visa route, and pay a fee.

The government also plans to revoke its legal duty to support asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute, a measure it says was introduced to comply with EU laws which Britain is no longer bound by.

Instead, support will be discretionary, and some people will be excluded – such as criminals, those who refuse to relocate, those who can work but won’t, those who are disruptive in their accommodation, and those who deliberately make themselves destitute.

Additionally, asylum seekers who have assets or income will be required to contribute to the cost of supporting themselves.

What about illegal migrants?

Meanwhile, illegal migrants and those who overstay their visas face a wait of up to 30 years before qualifying for permanent settlement.

But plans to bar criminals from settlement are still being figured out, with the government saying “work will take place to consider the precise threshold” at which someone is ineligible.

“The reforms will make Britain’s settlement system by far the most controlled and selective in Europe,” according to the government.

Alongside the new measures, plans are afoot to boost the number of migrants being removed from the UK.

What about illegal migrants who are already here?

A “one in, one out” agreement is already in place with France, under which those who cross the channel illegally are to be sent back, with Britain accepting instead a “security-checked migrant… via a safe and legal route”.

“This pilot is under way, and the government is working in partnership with French on expansion,” according to the government.

Furthermore, refugees will not have automatic family reunion rights, and the removal of families of failed asylum seekers is to be stepped up.

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Perhaps controversial are plans to offer financial support to those who agree to go voluntary.

The government argues this is “the most cost-effective approach for UK taxpayers and we will encourage people to take up these opportunities”.

Sanctions will also be imposed on nations that fail to cooperate on the return of their citizens, including suspending visas for that country.

And for those who are refused refugee status, the appeals process is to be streamlined, with one route of appeal, judged by one body, requiring applicants to make all their arguments in one go, instead of making multiple claims.

Human rights legislation will be reformed too, in a bid to reduce legal challenges to deportations.

Finally, the number of arrivals accepted through “safe and legal routes” will be capped, “based on local capacity to support refugees”.

The reforms will not apply to people with settled status, and there will be a consultation on “transitional arrangements” in some cases.

The five-year wait for immediate family members of UK citizens remains unchanged, as it does for Hong Kongers with British national (overseas) visas.