Hewa Rahimpur, 30, led a double life in Ilford, east London. On the surface, there was no sign he was one of Europe’s most notorious people smugglers responsible for transporting up to 10,000 people across the Channel on small boats.
He was known as a friendly young man who, like many immigrants to the area, was struggling to get by. “He was nice to everyone around here, to be honest,” said his landlady, Linda.
Rahimpur opened a “traditional barbers” in Hither Green, south-east London, in 2020. When that failed he tried running a food kiosk in Ilford.
“He was like a kid,” said one friend, who recalled him speaking to his mother in Iran in tears. “He was a proper mummy’s boy,” the friend told the Sunday Times.
Now we know Rahimpur was concealing his thriving people-smuggling business which had cruel disregard for human life.
Rahimpur’s approach was revealed in text messages he sent to some of his passengers that were read out in court. When one boat faced difficulty, he advised them against calling the French coastguard. And when one complained about the state of the boat he said that was “not important … just get to the other side”.
There are mixed versions of his backstory. Rahimpur arrived in the UK in 2016 seeking asylum as an ethnic Kurd from Iran, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).
But those who know him told Sky News he came from Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where he is reported to own expensive properties.
The NCA believe he travelled to the UK illegally in a lorry but had no history of any criminal activity. Kate Philpotts, the NCA’s senior investigating officer in the case, believes he realised this was a way to make large sums of money after paying a smuggler himself.
She said: “I think he got involved in it because he probably saw how lucrative a thing it was. He was entrepreneurial and decided to make money out of it, as he had paid money to get here himself.”
After being granted leave to remain in the UK in 2020, Rahimpur used his barber business and then the food kiosk as fronts for his people-smuggling business. From his flat in Ilford, he directed the gang.
His phone records show he was involved in the sourcing of boats across Europe, and directing other gang members to take the boats and other equipment to the French coast. He then arranged for people to make the journey across the Channel.
The authorities were first alerted to Rahimpur when Belgian police found a number of inflatable boats and outboard motors in the back of a car near the Belgian-French border in October 2021. One of those arrested said they drove an outboard motor to Calais, while denying any knowledge of smuggling.
But phone messages showed that the drivers had been in contact with a UK phone number that was traced to Rahimpur.
When he was arrested on the 4 May 2022 in Wanstead Park there was little sign of the vast money he was making, although he was in the process of buying an expensive car.
According to the NCA, he was living a modest life and claimed to have a partner and child. There has been no evidence since of any family in the UK.
The police were able to establish that Rahimpur was at the centre of a hawala system, an informal network for transferring funds between the smuggling gang and its suppliers. He was openly using Facebook posts and other social media to advertise passage across the Channel. With fees of up to £6,000 a person, Rahimpur could make profits of between £175,000 and £260,000 a boat.
Craig Turner, the NCA’s deputy director of investigations, said: “He operated a business model where lives were treated as a commodity to be profited from. He put individuals at significant risk just by the sheer danger of crossing the Channel.”
