Two men who ran people smuggling ring from car wash jailed for 19 years

Two men have been jailed for 19 years each for running a people smuggling ring from a car wash in south Wales that moved migrants across Europe.

Dilshad Shamo, 43, originally from Iraq, and Ali Khdir, 42, who was born in Iran, appeared to be successful owners of the Fast Track Hand Car Wash in Caerphilly.

But behind the scenes, the pair were unlawfully arranging for hundreds of people to travel from Iraq, Iran and Syria through Turkey, Belarus, Moldova and Bosnia.

Between 409 and 639 non-EU nationals reached Italy, Germany, Croatia and Romania illegally, often via Turkey, in 2022 and 2023, a judge found.

Cardiff Crown Court heard it was not possible to calculate the minimum turnover for all the people assisted by Shamo and Khdir but it would be £1,872,231.11 for 384 migrants.

Customers were offered three tiers of services, with the simplest being on foot or by HGV or smaller vehicle, the next by cargo ship or yacht, and the top tier by plane.

Shamo and Khdir’s role was uncovered after undercover surveillance by investigators for the National Crime Agency (NCA), supported by Gwent Police.

They pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiring to breach immigration laws and pleaded guilty to all charges against them after 10 days of prosecution evidence at their trial at Cardiff Crown Court.

On Friday, the Recorder of Cardiff Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke jailed both men for 19 years.

She told them they had been involved in trafficking people for financial gain between October 2022 and April 2023.

“Those people were predominantly from Iran, Iraq or Syria,” the judge said.

“Migrants paid, often thousands of pounds, to be trafficked across Europe by you and many others, via various organised routes to or through Italy, Romania, Germany, and Croatia.

“Money was deposited by the migrants in order to fund the journey. The facilitators would usually use the Hawala money transfer system, where there is no need to send money between the sender and recipient, through money agents based in Iraq and elsewhere, to manage the financial transfers from the migrants and between themselves.

“You sometimes travelled to the countries where the people smuggling operations took place in order to resolve local problems or to evaluate a new people smuggling route.”

‘Visa route’

The judge described how the men had four methods for people smuggling, named by prosecutors as the Turkey route, the visa route, the lorry route and the Bosnian route.

She said the business was “well-organised and successful”, involving the movement of many people on different routes through multiple countries.

“You organised the routes, visited locations to check the viability of the routes, co-ordinated the recruitment of customers, set the fees, offered price reductions for refugees and children, paid compensation to your customers, paid the costs of the facilitators that you engaged, and co-ordinated all the many things that needed to be done to ensure that the migrants were successfully smuggled into and across a number of European countries,” the judge told the defendants.

The court heard that a small number of the people smuggled or intending to be smuggled were or may have been related to them.

Videos of successful journeys were used to advertise the business to prospective customers, Judge Lloyd-Clarke added.

She said some of the routes involved dangerous situations, such as people hiding in a lorry overnight on a ship, or crossing a border protected by razor wire and guards.

Some of those who were smuggled were vulnerable, including one person who was disabled, and a number of families with young children.

On one occasion, Shamo and Khdir facilitated the movement of a Kurdish militia fighter, the judge said.

Listening devices

During the trial, prosecutor Sarah Gaunt detailed how police listening devices were placed in the defendants’ cars and in the car wash during the surveillance operation.

The defendants were observed organising and liaising with people to facilitate or attempt to facilitate illegal immigration, she said.

Speaking after the case, NCA branch commander Derek Evans said: “Our long-running investigation showed Khdir and Shamo were working around the clock to orchestrate the movement of migrants across Europe. We believe they smuggled more than 400 people in a period of just six months.

“While on the surface they portrayed themselves as successful businessmen running a car wash from Caerphilly, they were actually leading an entirely separate life as part of a criminal network.”