A people smuggling gang kingpin based in east London has been jailed for buying boats for up to 10,000 migrants so they could cross the Channel into the UK.
Ilford resident Hewa Rahimpur, 30, was sentenced to 11 years behind bars on Wednesday for aiding nearly 10 per cent of all migrant crossings to the UK across a 12 to 18-month period.
Rahimpur, who is Kurdish and originally from Iran, came to the UK to claim asylum in 2016.
He sourced the boats in Turkey and had them delivered to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, before they were moved to the north French coast.
The gang would make between £175,000 and £260,000 in profit from each of the dangerous crossings, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), who led the investigation, said.
At that time people were charged between £3,000 and £6,000 per crossing, with around 40 people crammed onto a small boat.
As with other smuggling gangs they openly advertised their services on social media, with officials describing the fight to get the entries removed as like playing “whack a mole”.
An international investigation started after the seizure of a number of boats and outboard motors, found by Belgian police in the back of two cars near the Belgian-French border in October 2021.Phone analysis showed the drivers had been in contact with a UK-based phone number, engaging in message conversations about boat movements and locations for delivery.The NCA was able to attribute the number to Rahimpur, tracking him down to east London where he was arrested.
Following Rahimpur's sentencing at a Belgian court, NCA deputy director Craig Turner said: “Hewa Rahimpur’s network was, at the time of his arrest, one of the most prolific criminal groups involved in small boat crossings, playing a part in transporting thousands of migrants to the UK.
“Bringing him to justice required the cooperation of law enforcement across Europe.
“We’re going to do all we can do to disrupt and dismantle these dangerous people from smuggling individuals into the UK.”
The NCA believe that because he paid to get to Britain, probably being smuggled in a lorry, Rahimpur then decided to get involved in trafficking to take some of the profits for himself.
Mr Turner said that the gang treated the smuggled migrants’ lives as a commodity.
He told journalists: “These criminal networks do not care about the safety of those that they transport.
“They are happy to put them in extremely dangerous and life threatening situations, and this is why disrupting and dismantling them remains a key priority for us.”
Rahimpur was arrested near Wanstead Park in May 2022, triggering a Europe wide investigation into the smuggling ring, with 60 boats and hundreds of life jackets seized.
More than 40 people were arrested across four countries in one of the biggest law enforcement operations of its kind.
In July last year a UK court ordered that Rahimpur should be extradited to Belgium to face criminal charges there, despite his false claims to have a partner and child in Britain.
On Wednesday he was jailed by a judge in Bruges alongside 19 other members of the gang, who received prison sentences ranging between 30 months and eight years.
