Albanians held in ‘debt bondage’ at drug farms to pay for Channel crossings

Albanians crossing the English Channel in small boats are being held in “debt bondage” by criminal gangs and forced to work off the cost of journeys in drug farms, officials have said.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) assesses that dinghies have become a cheaper alternative to the clandestine methods of staffing the “criminal marketplace” – like lorries and false documents – dominant in the past.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, NCA senior intelligence manager Ged McCann said Albanians arriving in small boats are commonly going into either the informal “grey economy”, particularly construction and car washes, or working for organised criminal groups.

“Illegal migration is effectively bringing in the labour force for growing cannabis,” he added. “Some of those being arrested have arrived a matter of days before on small boats.”

Mr McCann said Albanian gangs were adapting supply to the demand of the UK’s “buoyant drug market”, particularly for cocaine, and were increasing their dominance in cannabis growing.

“Cannabis farms are often staffed with illegal migrants in debt bondage,” he added.

Steve Brocklesby, an NCA intelligence manager, said the debt can be created either when criminal gangs pay another group for a person’s crossing over the English Channel, or the person owes a facilitator after arranging the trip themselves.

“Many times you get an OCG [organised criminal gang] in the UK that has a specific requirement for an Albanian for a certain job, for example, a cannabis grower, and in that case they will pay a debt bond for them to come to the UK and the individual is responsible for paying it back,” he added.

Mr Brocklesby said that Albanians working in drug markets earn more money than those in unregulated legal employment in the “grey economy”, and that the potential earnings are considered a pull factor.

The NCA estimates that hundreds of millions of pounds a year is leaving Britain for Albania, much of it from criminal enterprise, and the amount is increasing.

Home Office figures show that the number of Albanians arriving in small boats has risen dramatically, from around 800 in the whole of 2021 to more than 11,000 between May and September this year.

Albanians make up the second-largest nationality for asylum applications in the past year, but the NCA says many disappear from Home Office-provided hotels and accommodation.

Mr Brocklesby said: “Previously it was all about clandestine entry – slip in on the back of an HGV and don’t come into law enforcement attention at all – go into the grey economy and then potentially the criminal economy.

“Now they have to register themselves [in small boat processing centres]. Once they’ve been effectively released on immigration bail, they will disappear into the same grey economy or criminal world as before.”

NCA officials could not definitively say whether more Albanians are now travelling to the UK for criminal purposes, or whether the use of small boats made arrivals easier to count.

Mr McCann said: “Small boats are more visible, we don’t know how many people were coming in clandestinely by definition.”

A new UK-France agreement on Channel crossings announced on Monday said the two countries would set up a “taskforce focused on reversing the recent rise in Albanian nationals and organised crime groups exploiting illegal migration routes into Western Europe and the UK”.

The government has also been seeking to speed up the removal of Albanians who arrive on small boats and signed a re-admissions deal with the country’s government last year.

Work is ongoing to remove social media posts advertising journeys to the UK, which often use legal means to travel through the Schengen area to northern France, before switching to small boats often organised by Iraqi Kurds.

Andrea Wilson, the NCA deputy director responsible for small boats, said the agency has a “very strong relationship with Albanian law enforcement” and is running more than 70 live operations into Albanian-linked gangs across different areas of serious crime.

“It’s important to stress that not all UK organised crime is dominated by Albanians,” she told the press conference.

“There are a lot of Albanians who come here for legitimate reasons, who want to work here and have a better life … they do not have a monopoly on serious organised crime in the UK.”

The NCA said it had been receiving anecdotal reports from police officers that Albanian suspects arrested at cannabis farms and on drugs raids were then making claims of modern slavery and trafficking.

Mr Brocklesby said some were “manipulating” the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), which gives people support while their claims are assessed, and may be coached on how the scheme works before leaving Albania.

He added that some police forces believe they have received “standard letters” from several people, and the accounts being given by others were disproved.

Ms Wilson confirmed that the NCA was seeing “suspected abuse” of the NRM at the point of arrest, adding: “We are concerned that people are abusing that system to stay in the UK and commit crime.”

The home secretary has also made claims that the NRM is being misused by small boat migrants, but when an MP asked the Home Office for figures on the reported exploitation the Home Office did not provide any data.