A people smuggler who sends migrants across the Channel reveals how the illicit small boats trade really works

Published

2 years ago

March 6, 2023

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“The majority of smugglers lose their money on gambling, drugs and discos.”

Those are the words of someone involved in cross-Channel people smuggling.

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, they lifted the lid on how people make it to Britain on small boats.

In just a few days, the government is set to publish new laws aiming to stop small boats crossing the Channel, with illegal migration remaining one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s priorities.

In a wide-ranging discussion, the smuggler revealed how they avoid the police and what they make of the government’s Rwanda deportation plan.

They also disclose how most of those involved in taking people across the Channel end up in the UK themselves.

And they blame “mafia” groups for the deaths of more than 30 people who drowned while trying to cross the Channel in November 2021.

Here’s what else they told us about how these criminal gangs operate, in our full Q&A.

How would you describe your role?

It starts in the camps. The refugees are there – all nationalities from Kurds to Afghans, Albanians and Pakistanis – and so are the smugglers.

People get the smuggler’s name and make an agreement about where to meet. Passengers are sent on foot, by bus or car to the beach.

The smuggler waits for the equipment to arrive, it’s assembled, then people are put in boats and they set off.

Smugglers are just doing business, transferring people to the other side.

They work and make money. They are even helping people.

We see it as just another job, like working in a restaurant or a barbershop.

What does it cost to get to Britain and what’s the process?

The first thing is the money. If someone has money, it’s easier.

If they don’t have money, the journey is more difficult and they’ll have to wait around.

If there are too many migrants, the prices go up. So it goes from €500 to €2,500.

If there aren’t enough people then the prices drop.

Different nationalities also affect the prices. For example, Albanians pay more, Pakistanis pay more.

How difficult do the French police make it?

Smugglers play hide and seek. If the police are there, they hide and wait till they have gone and then we do our job.

The police watch us, and we also watch the police. When they have gone, we do the job.

But if the police are there they disrupt our work and puncture the dinghy.

It’s becoming more difficult to avoid the police because the locations have now been identified.

In the past, it was just the trucks. The police now know from which points smugglers send people.

People have died going to Britain on small boats – would you put your family on a boat?

Yes, it’s normal. People take four days [to travel] from Greece to Italy. Compared to that trip, this journey is nothing.

People put their own family members in these dinghies – their wives, sisters and brothers.

Sometimes, they cross themselves.

Is smuggling a lucrative business?

Some people lose money.

An eight-metre dinghy costs around €1,000-€12,000. If the police come and tear it apart, that’s €12,000 down the drain.

Sometimes it happens twice, or the engine doesn’t work, or the dinghy is confiscated on its way.

But some also make a profit.

The majority of smugglers lose their money on gambling, drugs and discos.

Tell us more about smugglers and the UK.

Three-quarters of the smugglers are in Britain. The money they make, they invest in business there.

They live there, life is easier there. Regardless of their nationalities, three-quarters of the smugglers live in the UK and invest their money in business.

They are happier there. They rent houses under someone else’s name and drive cars without a licence.

They walk around London. They walk around Leeds, Birmingham and Newcastle.

They have made money, invested it there and have businesses.

They send people across the water and then they jump on the last boat and cross the water.

What about the UK government’s Rwanda plan – would that change anything?

I swear even if they send people to the Amazon, people will come to Britain – it’s their wish to go to Britain.

It will change a bit for some nationalities.

It will decrease but not to the extent that refugees won’t come to Britain.

People will still come.

Where do the boats come from?

In the past, people would go to Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium and would buy boats there. But that has decreased because it was discovered [by police].

So now people bring the boats from Turkey – they can buy them in bulk and it’s cheaper.

It costs around €3,500. So they buy five or six and send them to Germany by post, and then from Germany, cars transport them to France.

How did the deaths of 31 migrants in the Channel in 2021 make you feel?

Some of these guys [other people smugglers] have no conscience.

Even when the weather is not good, they are addicts and just want the money and to play with people’s lives.

People are desperate in the camps in the rain and cold, and with the police’s dawn raids.

If you tell the migrants “tonight is good”, everyone swarms around you and they don’t care. They don’t know about the weather.

Some of the smugglers are mafia, not smugglers, and do it only for the money. They know the weather is not good, but they still play with people’s lives.

The night of the incident was one of those nights.

The ones who did it were mafia – they have no heart.

UK

UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September – slower than expected

Published

25 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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UK economy grows by 0.1% between July and September - slower than expected

The UK economy grew by 0.1% between July and September, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

However, despite the small positive GDP growth recorded in the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.1% in September, dragging down overall growth for the quarter.

The growth was also slower than what had been expected by experts and a drop from the 0.5% growth between April and June, the ONS said.

Economists polled by Reuters and the Bank of England had forecast an expansion of 0.2%, slowing from the rapid growth seen over the first half of 2024 when the economy was rebounding from last year’s shallow recession.

And the metric that Labour has said it is most focused on – the GDP per capita, or the economic output divided by the number of people in the country – also fell by 0.1%.

Reacting to the figures, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.

“At my budget, I took the difficult choices to fix the foundations and stabilise our public finances.

“Now we are going to deliver growth through investment and reform to create more jobs and more money in people’s pockets, get the NHS back on its feet, rebuild Britain and secure our borders in a decade of national renewal,” Ms Reeves added.

The sluggish services sector – which makes up the bulk of the British economy – was a particular drag on growth over the past three months. It expanded by 0.1%, cancelling out the 0.8% growth in the construction sector.

The UK’s GDP for the most recent quarter is lower than the 0.7% growth in the US and 0.4% in the Eurozone.

The figures have pushed the UK towards the bottom of the G7 growth table for the third quarter of the year.

It was expected to meet the same 0.2% growth figures reported in Germany and Japan – but fell below that after a slow September.

The pound remained stable following the news, hovering around $1.267. The FTSE 100, meanwhile, opened the day down by 0.4%.

The Bank of England last week predicted that Ms Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

The Bank’s quarterly report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

UK

Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is ‘growing in popularity’

Published

25 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Meeting the deeply radical anti-tax group that is 'growing in popularity'

“If you are a member of something, it means you’ve accepted membership. Anything with ‘ship’ on the end, it’s giving you a clue: it’s telling you that’s maritime law. That means you’ve entered into a contract.”

This isn’t your standard legal argument and it is becoming clear that I am dealing with an unusual way of looking at the world.

I’m in the library of a hotel in Leicestershire, a wood-panelled room with warm lighting, and Pete Stone, better known as Sovereign Pete, is explaining how “the system” works. Mr Stone is in his mid-50, bald with a goatee beard and wearing, as he always does for public appearances, a black T-shirt and black jeans.

With us are six other people, mainly dressed in neat jumpers. They’re members of the Sovereign Project (SP), an organisation Mr Stone founded in 2020, which, he says, now has more than 20,000 paying members.

As arcane as this may sound, it represents a worldview that is becoming more influential – and causing problems for authorities. Loosely, they’re defined as “sovereign citizens” or “freemen on the land”.

Their fundamental point is that nobody is required to obey laws they have not specifically consented to – especially when it comes to tax. They have hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Telegram.

Increasingly, they are coming into conflict with governments and the law. Sovereign citizens have ended up in the High Court in recent months, challenging the legalities of tax bills and losing on both occasions.

In October, four people were sentenced to prison for the attempted kidnapping of an Essex coroner, who they saw as acting unlawfully. The self-appointed “sheriffs” attempted to force entry to the court, one of them demanding: “You guys have been practising fraud!”

The Sovereign Project is not connected to any of those cases, nor does it promote any sort of political action, let alone violence.

Instead, they are focused on issues like questioning the obligation to pay taxes, as Mr Stone explains, referencing the feudal system that operated in the Middle Ages.

“Do you know about the feudal system when people were slaves and were forced to pay tax?” he asks.

“Now, unless the feudal system still operates today, and we still have serfs and slaves, then the only way that you can pay taxes is to have a contract, you have to agree to it and consent to it.”

Another member, Karl Deans, a 43-year-old property developer who runs the SP’s social media, says: “We’re not here to dodge tax.”

Local government tends to be a target beyond just demands for tax. Mr Stone speaks of “council employee crimes”.

I ask whether, considering the attempted kidnapping in Essex, there is a danger that people will listen to these accusations of crimes by councils and act on them.

“Well that’s proved,” Mr Stone says. “We only deal with facts.”

Evidence suggests this approach is becoming an issue for councils across the UK, as people search online for ways to avoid paying tax.

Sky News analysis shows that out of 374 council websites covering Great Britain, at least 172 (46%) have pages responding to sovereign citizen arguments around avoiding paying council tax. They point out that liability for council tax is not dependent on consent, or a contract, and instead relies on the Local Government Finance Act 1992, voted on by Parliament.

But the Sovereign Project’s worldview extends beyond council tax. It is deeply anti-establishment, at times conspiratorial. Stone suggests the summer riots may have been organised by the government.

“The sovereign fraternity operates above all of this,” he says. “We look down at the world like a chessboard. We see what’s going on.”

He explains that, really, the UK government isn’t actually in control: there is a shadow government above them.

“These are the people who control government,” he explains.

“A lot of people say this could be the crown council of 13, this could be a series of Italian families.”

Professor Christine Sarteschi, an expert in sovereign citizens at Chatham University, Pittsburgh, says she’s worried about the threat sovereign citizens may pose to the rule of law, especially in the US where guns are readily available.

“The movement is growing and that’s evidenced by seeing it in different countries and hearing about different cases. The concern is that they will become emboldened and commit acts of violence,” she says.

“Because sovereigns truly believe in their ideas and if they feel very aggrieved by, you know, the government or whomever they think is oppressing them or controlling them… they can become emotionally involved.

“That emotional involvement sometimes leads to violence in some cases, or the belief that they have the power to attempt to overthrow a government in some capacity.”

Much of this seems to be based on an underlying and familiar frustration at the state of this country and of the world.

Mr Stone echoes some of the characteristic arguments also made by the right, that there is “two-tier policing”, that refugees arriving in the UK are “young men of fighting age”, that the government is using “forced immigration to destroy the country”.

Another SP member, retired investment banker David Hopgood, 61, says: “I firmly believe it is the true Englishman – and woman – of this country – that has the power to unlock this madness that’s happening in the West.

“We’ve got the Magna Carta – all these checks and balances. We just need to pack up, go down to Parliament and say: It’s time to dismiss you. You’re not fit for purpose.”

The members of the Sovereign Project are unfailingly patient and polite in explaining their understanding of the world.

But there is no doubt they hold a deeply radical view, one that is apparently growing in popularity.

UK

Wes Streeting ‘crossed the line’ by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Published

25 mins ago

November 15, 2024

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Wes Streeting 'crossed the line' by opposing assisted dying in public, says Labour peer Harriet Harman

Wes Streeting “crossed the line” by opposing assisted dying in public and the argument shouldn’t “come down to resources”, a Labour peer has said.

Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harriet Harman criticised the health secretary for revealing how he is going to vote on the matter when it comes before parliament later this month.

MPs are being given a free vote, meaning they can side with their conscience and not party lines, so the government is supposed to be staying neutral.

But Mr Streeting has made clear he will vote against legalising assisted dying, citing concerns end-of-life care is not good enough for people to make an informed choice, and that some could feel pressured into the decision to save the NHS money.

He has also ordered a review into the potential costs of changing the law, warning it could come at the expense of other NHS services if implemented.

Baroness Harman said Mr Streeting has “crossed the line in two ways”.

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“He should not have said how he was going to vote, because that breaches neutrality and sends a signal,” she said.

“And secondly… he’s said the problem is that it will cost money to bring in an assisted dying measure, and therefore he will have to cut other services.

“But paradoxically, he also said it would be a slippery slope because people will be forced to bring about their own death in order to save the NHS money. Well, it can’t be doing both things.

“It can’t be both costing the NHS money and saving the NHS money.”

Baroness Harman said the argument “should not come down to resources” as it is a “huge moral issue” affecting “only a tiny number of people”.

She added that people should not mistake Mr Streeting for being “a kind of proxy for Keir Starmer”.

“The government is genuinely neutral and all of those backbenchers, they can vote whichever way they want,” she added.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously expressed support for assisted dying, but it is not clear how he intends to vote on the issue or if he will make his decision public ahead of time.

The cabinet has varying views on the topic, with the likes of Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood siding with Mr Streeting in her opposition but Energy Secretary Ed Miliband being for it.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being championed by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater, who wants to give people with six months left to live the choice to end their lives.

Under her proposals, two independent doctors must confirm a patient is eligible for assisted dying and a High Court judge must give their approval.

The bill will also include punishments of up to 14 years in prison for those who break the law, including coercing someone into ending their own life.

MPs will debate and vote on the legislation on 29 November, in what will be the first Commons vote on assisted dying since 2015, when the proposal was defeated.