WIREDGOV

UK Border Agency now a major anti-crime force

News Release issued by the COI News Distribution Service on 22 February 2010

In 2009 the UK Border Agency (UKBA) specialist immigration crime teams, working with 300 seconded police officers, prosecuted more than 2,200 people for organised immigration crimes including human trafficking, fraud and drug smuggling.

Border and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, speaking today at the European Serious Organised Crime conference, confirmed the UKBA as one of the country’s largest law enforcement bodies.

Migrants who come to the UK enter into a deal to play by the rules. Overseas criminals who break that pact and damage local communities will find UKBA officers using immigration powers to tackle them.

Phil Woolas said:

"Smugglers, forgers, traffickers be warned – the UK is a hostile environment. You will be targeted, you will be caught and immigration powers can and will be used to prosecute you and remove you from the country.

"The UK Border Agency is responding to local community needs as a law enforcement agency. Our borders are stronger than ever and frontline immigration staff work collaboratively with police, local authorities and government agencies to target and disband immigration crime that preys on vulnerable individuals."

During his speech Phil Woolas launched the UKBA’s five-year crime strategy, 'Protecting our Border, Protecting the Public', which sets out the UKBA’s approach at home and abroad to preventing crime and detecting and targeting criminals who seek to abuse the immigration system.

He also set out actions that have been taken by the UKBA to clamp down on crime, including:

• electronic ‘e-border’ checks – to date triggering more than 5,000 arrests including people wanted for murder, rape and fraud;

• a freight targeting system that provides real-time risk assessment and powerful new scanners to detect smuggled goods at port;

• providing detection technology and training to other countries, including to the special fraud unit of Nigeria’s Police Force – assisting it in tracking down the manufacturers and suppliers of fraudulent documents;

• UKBA officers stationed around the world stopping 42,000 inadequately documented passengers from boarding flights bound for the UK last year;

• UKBA joining the fraud prevention agency CIFAS in 2010;

• between April and September 2009 teams identifying 350 potential victims of trafficking including 104 children; and

• seizing £343 million worth of illicit drugs, 5,800 dangerous weapons and 3,165,849 items of counterfeit and pirated goods between April 2008 and March 2009.

The UKBA crime strategy tackles crime by working in partnership with the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Association of Chief Police Officers, police forces, HM Revenue & Customs, Department of Work and Pensions, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Department of Health, Crown Prosecution Service, UK human trafficking centre, industry bodies such as airlines and hauliers, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and foreign governments.

CASE STUDIES

SHEFFIELD Sentencing took place on 11 December 2009.

Fifteen year old female trafficked from Slovakia to the UK. She had run away from a childrens home in Slovakia having attended her mother's funeral. Once in Sheffield the girl was forced into prostitution under the threat of violence, being beaten up at least once. She worked every day with men paying £20 / £30 for sex. She earned between £200/ £300 a night. She was identified when a prospective client understood her pleas for help and called the police.

Three subjects, having been found guilty of a number of offences including; trafficking into the UK for the purposes of sexual exploitation, intentionally controlling the activities of a person in relation to prostitution for a gain, facilitating the prostitution of a child aged 15 and false imprisonment, were sentenced as follows:

• Roman Dunka (SVK) - 17 years imprisonment;
• Alzbeta Dunkova (SVK) - 16 years imprisonment; and
• Marcel Dunka (SVK) - 17 years imprisonment.

All three subjects were recommended for deportation at the end of their sentence, made to sign the sex offenders register and prohibited from working with children.

EAST MIDLANDS Sentencing took place on 7 May 2009

In November 2008, a consignment of 4,000 counterfeit French passport pages was intercepted at Heathrow Airport en route to an address in Leicester. Three people were arrested under the ID Cards Act.

On 23 January 2009, two addresses were visited in Leicester. A Filipino national called Brando SIBAYAN and an Indian national called Mandip SHARMA were arrested in what was clearly an extremely large and well developed document counterfeiting business. Laminates, threads, covers, holograms, fiscal stamps, wet ink stamps and hundreds of finished and partially finished documents were recovered along with all the paraphernalia necessary for their construction. The forgers had kept records of every identity they had produced and materials for the production of over 5,000 documents were seized. A £3,000 cash seizure was made under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). In May 2009 the two pleaded guilty and were sentenced to four years each in prison.

NORTHAMPTON Sentencing took place on 9 February 2010

In July 2008 a Vietnamese national came forward stating that a Mr Hanh Van VU had assaulted him. He was interviewed by a UKBA immigration crime team and gave an account of how he had arrived in the UK. It was apparent that he had in fact been trafficked by VU.

VU was asked to attend an interview however enquiries revealed he had booked a flight to Vietnam for a few days later. Officers attended Heathrow and arrested VU. He was found to have £21,000 concealed in his luggage.

The investigation revealed a complex set up exposing a Vietnamese Organised Crime Group (OCG), concerned with the trafficking of Vietnamese nationals into the UK. The OCG paid for the flights, provided false documents and instructions regarding their destruction upon arrival at Heathrow, and gave individuals cover stories to tell to UKBA on arrival.

Each person was also given a new false name, date and place of birth – the place of birth was in regions where there had previously been anti-communist demonstrations.

The ‘cover story’ was to assist their UK ‘asylum claim’ and included false declarations of imprisonment and torture back in Vietnam.

As potential genuine asylum seekers, they were documented and processed by Immigration Officers, before being allowed into the UK. Once in the UK the OCG would collect them and place them in housing within the London area.

Each subject was informed that they had incurred a debt to the OCG of £20k, as a result of helping him or her to enter. Each person would then have to work (initially cleaning airport hotels, then working in nail bars owned by the OCG) to pay off this debt.

This could take between two and six years to pay off, and included excessive daily hours, with long periods of time without any days off (one day off every two months). VU was the mastermind of the UK operation. Financial investigations showed over £100K per year being transferred from the UK to Vietnam by him. Investigations have identified hundreds of Vietnamese nationals trafficked into the UK in this way.

The judge sentenced Mr Hanh Van VU to a total of 11 years imprisonment. Ms Duc Thi VU received two and a half years imprisonment. The two had married to enable Mr VU to remain in the UK. However they were brother and sister.

The confiscation / money laundering amounts to be recovered will be settled at a later hearing, but will include the forfeiture of the £21k found on him at the time of his arrest, and assessments of the £180k cash transferred to Vietnam in 2007 / 2008, and investigations of property owned abroad.

DERBYSHIRE Sentencing expected on 26 February 2010

Information received by UKBA that a chicken processing plant in Derbyshire was using exploited labour led to the arrest of five people, three company directors plus the labour provider and his wife.

Seized PCs and laptops yielded evidence including 5,000 scanned copies of counterfeited Romanian ID cards. It is believed that these were provided as part of the package to workers from outside the EU to “legitimise” their employment – but at a cost to the employee, instantly putting them into debt bondage.

£120,000 was seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act – this is the largest cash seizure in the history of Derbyshire Police. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has sought advice from UKBA officers on an inquiry it has launched into abuses of employees in the UK food processing sector

The labour provider and his sister plus one of the company directors were charged with conspiracy to facilitate illegal entry for the purposes of labour exploitation.
The other two company directors paid a £60,000 civil penalty.

The labour provider and his sister pleaded guilty. The company director said he was innocent, but was tried and found guilty.

WEST MIDLANDS Deported in May 2009

A Jamaican national going by the name of Clerriky Rochester BORELAND was granted entry clearance in Kingston, Jamaica as the spouse of a British National. He travelled to the UK and was granted indefinite leave to remain.

Intelligence suggested that the subject was involved in the supply of class A drugs in the Birmingham and Nottingham areas; traditional policing methods had failed to bring a successful prosecution. The UKBA were approached in October 2008 to assist.

The immigration crime team checked Home Office databases and cross referenced them to police databases. They were able to ascertain that Boreland was also known by the alias of Klemens Kapuuo SALMON and that a person in that name was a previous UKBA removal. Photograph comparisons quickly established that Salmon and Boreland were one and the same.

A warrant was obtained by the team and the subject was located and arrested. He was charged with obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception and subsequently convicted to twelve months imprisonment upon a guilty plea.

He was recommended for deportation upon conclusion of sentence and was successfully deported in May 2009. The new fingerprint regime for visas will prevent him from entering the UK.

LEEDS – sentencing took place on 22 December 2009

A group of Nigerian males and females involved in ‘sham marriages’ with Slovakian males and females. Marriages were centred on churches in the Bradford area and were taking place to allow the Nigerian parties to remain in the UK as spouses of EU Citizens. It was believed up to £2,000 cash was being extorted from Nigerian men desperate to stay in the UK.

• Denis Baiger (CZE) – four and a half years imprisonment for conspiracy to facilitate / supply of class A drug offences.

• Adeola Abimbola Orobiyi (NGA) – three and a half years imprisonment for conspiracy to facilitate / possess false identity documents with intent offences.

• Adesola Ayorinde Adewole (NGA) - 12 months imprisonment for perjury / possess false identity documents with intent offences.

• Peter Oduneye / Abbey (NGA) - 12 months imprisonment for perjury / possess false identity documents with intent offences.

• Richard Adeleye Okunade (NGA) - 12 months imprisonment for conspiracy to facilitate offence.

• Lucia Koncekova (SVK) - 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years and 250 hours unpaid work for conspiracy to facilitate offence.

• Veronika Horvathove (CZE) - 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years and 250 hours unpaid work for conspiracy to facilitate / possess false identity documents with intent offences.

HACKNEY, LONDON April 2009

Following complaints about anti-social behaviour from local residents, UKBA and police officers visited a former pub building on Kingsland Road on 30 April 2009, questioning those inside and checking their identities.
Four men, three from Bolivia and one from Columbia were arrested for immigration offences including overstaying on a visa and obtaining leave to enter the UK by deception. They were taken for further questioning by immigration staff, detained, and removed from the country.

BIRMINGHAM – sentencing took place on 28 October 2009
A vulnerable 15 year-old girl from a dysfunctional family in Romania was groomed locally and ran away from home, staying with a local family who promised to find the girl work in the UK.
She flew to Birmingham in May 2008 and was met by Sorin SARDARU. The girl was taken to an address in Birmingham and raped by SARDARU and other unidentified males. She was then told that she was to work as a prostitute. A false identity showing her age to be older than her true age was procured and she began working in a city massage parlour.

Acting on intelligence joint immigration crime teams rescued her in July 2008 and she was placed under the care of the UK Human Trafficking Centre. Investigating officers spoke to Romanian Anti-Human Trafficking Department and SARDARU was identified. He was known to the Romanians as the head of an organised crime gang and was wanted for robbery.

SARDARU was charged with trafficking, controlling child prostitution and rape. The family of the girl were met with a combination of threats and bribes in Romania within hours of charges being laid.
Judge Morriss referred to him as "a disgusting human being and the lowest form of life" before handing down a 7 year sentence. He was recommended for deportation and placed on the sex offender register for life.
The girl remains in the UK studying at a local college – she has aspirations to become a police officer.

Contacts:

Home Office Press Office
Phone: 020 7035 3535
NDS.HO@coi.gsi.gov.uk