Monday 01 Dec 2025 @ 16:10
Crown Commercial Service
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Man jailed for hiring taxi drivers to help smuggle migrants to France

An unemployed man who hired a team of taxi drivers in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants illegally to France in the back of lorries was recently (28 Novemebr 2025) jailed.

Madjid Belabes, 53, arranged for five taxi drivers to take migrants from London to lay-bys and service stations in Kent, from where they would be put in lorries and smuggled to France. He is estimated to have made £287,000 from the plot with a going rate of £1,200 for each migrant.

In one incident in February 2023, 58 migrants who were Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian nationals managed to get as far as France before they were discovered. They had all been in the UK legally on visitor visas.

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