You never know what you’re going to find in a smuggler’s truck, car or boat. It might be drugs,
it might be gold or weapons,
it might be cash… Or it might be this:
A trunk full of desperate people.
Simultaneous raids in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey this week
revealed a large migrant smuggling ring that saw luxury cars racing west across Europe at high speed
away from Europe’s eastern edge, stuffed with an alarming number of people layered inside.
The Mob Reporter here with news of two large-scale smuggling operations that were undone just two days apart, the speedy Greek caper,
and one in England, where an Albanian organized crime ring was moving migrants
across the English Channel through a tunnel from France, hidden inside vans and trucks.
Let me tell you about it.
Where Greece meets Turkey is the eastern gateway to the European Union. That makes it a magnet for people fleeing the Middle East and
South Asia seeking a new life in Western Europe. And organized crime rings are making millions
moving them across thousands of miles in precarious ways.
On Friday, July 23, 2021, simultaneous police raids in Bulgaria,
Greece and Hungary revealed a joint operation to take down an organized people smuggling ring.
Gangsters were transporting waves of irregular migrants from the Greek-Turkish
borderland of the Evros region for at least the past two years, and likely much longer.
The 100 or so miles of the border in Greece’s far north-east, became
a major refugee and migrant flashpoint last year. The border often saw clashes between migrants and
border authorities on both sides of the boundary. This smuggling network used powerful pickup
trucks and luxury cars in a bid to avoid scrutiny and security checkpoints.
Their tactic was to look innocuous but then outrun anyone that showed unwanted
interest — leading to multiple high-speed chases and crashes on highways across Europe.
Authorities traced 89 different high-end vehicles used in the scheme,
most of them imported from Georgia by Bulgarians. Over the months, several attempts were found and stopped,
sometimes after chases and crashes. Police found as many as 15 people layered into
each vehicle. Try to imagine making that trip. Authorities said the migrants paid between
2,000 and 2,500 Euros per person, which is about US$3,000 to 3,700.
On Friday's joint day of action by multiple police forces, at
least 19 people were arrested: six of them in Bulgaria, five in Greece and eight in Hungary.
Authorities say the suspects are of Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish and Georgian nationalities.
The network was run by a crime family in Bulgaria that specializes in people
smuggling. High-performance cars — including large BMW,
Mercedes, and Audi sedans as well as vans, pickups and SUVs — were brought to Hungary on trailers
from Bulgaria and Georgia, along with experienced smugglers, mostly Ukrainian and Georgian drivers,
who were housed in Hungary between runs, which in Hungary meant moving migrants
between its southern border with Serbia to its western border with Austria.
In April, when police tried to stop this BMW, it took off trying to escape,
only to crash into two other police vehicles.
With the 26-year-old Ukrainian driver were nine undocumented migrants, who said they were from Syria.
In this stop in January, 12 people saying they were Syrian were found packed in the back of this
hatchback, driven by a 25-year-old Georgian man. These, of course, are only a few that were caught.
It is unknown how many got away or how many slipped through completely undetected.
In this joint operation, coordinated by Europol, the European Union police agency, authorities
searched 15 locations and at last tally seized 29 vehicles, that includes 15 cars described as high end, and
10 trailers used to move the cars from country to country, also seized were electronics, phones, more than
100 SIM cards, cash, and Bitcoin mining equipment. Maybe that’s what the drivers were doing when not behind the wheel.
Meanwhile, in England, this was going on this week, another large migrant smuggling investigation that ended with raids and arrests.
I’m struck by how utterly chill the other men are sitting at the table at the Galicia Tapas Bar on Croydon High Street, a major commercial stretch.
Their target, the National Crime Agency said, was an Albanian gang responsible for illegally driving hundreds of migrants into the United Kingdom, hidden in vans and trucks,
through the tunnel under the English Channel, from northern France. The Channel Tunnel is the longest underwater
tunnel in the world and has dual rail lines carrying passengers as well as vehicles.
Among the six men and one woman arrested in England was the network’s boss, the agency said.
The accused range in age from 44 to 26 years old, which is also the age of the only woman arrested.
The organization had contacts across Europe: in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
Six attempted runs into Britain were discovered and stopped by UK Border Force officers in the
last half of 2020, during searches of vehicles at the Channel Tunnel terminal
in Coquelles, France, near Calais. Subsequent investigations found each
case primarily involved Albanians and were linked to the same organized crime group, the NCA said.
They used corrupted truck drivers to carry the migrants hidden in their vehicles.
The network promised premier service
and charged accordingly. The NCA said migrants are believed to have
paid £20,000 and £25,000 to reach England. That’s roughly US$27,000 and 30,000 USD.
Investigators traced money to several bank accounts, some churning through hundreds of thousands of pounds, police said.
Migrant smuggling is big business across Europe. And it’s a hard problem to solve with
human rights, political, economic, social, security, health and welfare issues often competing.
Thanks for watching.