The UK has sanctioned 25 people-smuggling bosses and enablers as part of a crackdown on irregular migration.
Gang ring leaders, key smugglers, fake passport suppliers, underground banking operators and a company in China accused of advertising its small boats online for the purpose of people-smuggling have all been targeted.
Earlier this week, the government announced new powers under the Sanctions Act to allow the UK to freeze the assets of anyone complicit in smuggling illegal migrants into the country. They can also be banned from travelling to the UK.
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Working with the National Crime Agency (NCA), the Foreign Office has now identified individuals and entities it says are involved in smuggling people over the Channel.
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People smugglers and underground bankers
Among those on the new sanctions list are seven Iraqi-linked individuals. Several are accused of helping smuggle migrants across the Channel in the back of lorries. The government said another runs safe houses for migrants in France before they attempt the crossing.
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Also sanctioned are three “hawala bankers”, people who funnel cash through an underground payment system known as Hawala.
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‘Gangland bosses’ and passport forgers
Two North African gangs operating in the Balkans are also on the list, including the Kazawi gang, which controls people smuggling routes from North Africa into the EU and is known to deal out harsh punishments to migrants who are unable to pay.
The other is the Tetwani gang, known as one of the Balkans’ most violent people smuggling gangs, with members reported to hold migrants for ransom and sexually abuse women unable to pay their fees.
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Four gang bosses have also been designated, including the leaders of the Kazawi and Tetwani gangs, the Albanian head of a smuggling ring moving people from Belgium to the UK, and a former police translator who became the boss of a large network of corrupt policemen through violence and intimidation.
Two organised crime groups in the Balkans that organise fake passports and forged documents, and six men from the gangs, have also been sanctioned.
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The list ends with Weihai Yamar Outdoors Product Co, a Chinese company which has advertised small boats on an online marketplace as “refugee boats”.
They have since removed the reference from their website.
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‘Landmark moment’
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “This is a landmark moment in the government’s work to tackle organised immigration crime, reduce irregular migration to the UK, and deliver on the Plan for Change.
“From Europe to Asia, we are taking the fight to the people-smugglers who enable irregular migration, targeting them wherever they are in the world and making them pay for their actions.
“My message to the gangs who callously risk vulnerable lives for profit is this: we know who you are, and we will work with our partners around the world to hold you to account.”
NCA director general Graeme Biggar said the new sanctions powers will complement the work of his agency to “undermine and frustrate” the operational capability of a “wide range of organised immigration crime networks”.
The first half of 2025 saw a record number of small boat crossings, with almost 20,000 people making the dangerous journey from January to July – the highest ever in that period, and 48% more than the first half of 2024.
