Three arrests after BBC investigation into criminal network on High Street

Three men have been arrested in dawn raids following a BBC News investigation into organised crime gangs operating on the High Street.

Two Iranian men aged 32 and 28 were arrested after immigration officers targeted multiple addresses in Birmingham and the West Midlands. The Home Office said the third man was a naturalised British citizen aged 43.

They are being held on suspicion of facilitating illegal entry to the UK and facilitating illegal working.

Earlier this month, the BBC found more than 100 mini-marts, car washes and barber shops operating from Dundee to south Devon were linked to a crime network.

Andy Radcliffe, an assistant director at Immigration Enforcement, is leading an investigation into the BBC’s allegations involving HMRC, the National Crime Agency, Companies House, police forces and Trading Standards.

An investigation was “immediately launched” after the BBC’s report, he said, with teams building “an intelligence picture in the matter of a few weeks”.

Mr Radcliffe added that this was just the start of the investigation “to try and tackle the widespread abuse”.

“We’re taking this very seriously… people could go to prison for this, we could take assets off them, so we’re taking it very seriously,” he said.

Earlier this month, the BBC revealed evidence of criminal networks organising and profiting from undocumented working in barber shops, mini-marts and carwashes across the UK.

The Home Office launched an “urgent investigation” involving police forces across the country after the BBC uncovered more than 100 businesses linked to a suspected Kurdish crime network enabling migrants to work illegally and sell counterfeit cigarettes in High Street mini-marts.

The investigation found an asylum seeker, who says his claim was rejected, trying to sell a mini-mart for £18,000 in cash.

Undercover reporters also exposed a man at the centre of an immigration crime group who said he had “customers in every city” and could wipe illegal working fines worth up to £60,000.

Loose regulation of Britain’s labour market is acting as a pull factor for those entering the UK illegally, the government has acknowledged.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said these kinds of criminal networks “create an incentive for people to come here illegally”.

Questioned by the BBC last week on whether the government had lost control of High Streets to Kurdish organised crime gangs, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “What your reporters were able to scrutinise and show is absolutely evidence of why our system is broken.

“It’s why this government has been cracking down on illegal working.”

In the Budget, the chancellor announced funding for 45 new Trading Standards officers.

Rachel Reeves said the government would be undertaking “additional enforcement activity on High Streets, focusing on illicit tobacco and vaping products”, which would involve deploying 350 newly-recruited criminal investigators part of the fraud investigation team.

Minister for migration and citizenship Mike Tapp praised the BBC investigation and its reporting saying “really it shows the value of the BBC”.

On a government level, he said: “We said we take it seriously and we have and we are.

“I hate what these, you know, hairdressers, nail bars and dodgy vape shops are doing to, so many of our high streets, not just for the look and feel of them, but also for those genuine businesses that are being undercut. So it’s really important that we continue to work hard to combat this.”

Additional reporting by Phill Edwards