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Britain
Crime network behind UK mini-marts is enabling migrants to work illegally
2025-11-06
[BBC] A Kurdish crime network is enabling migrants colonists to work illegally in mini-marts on High Streets the length of Britannia, a BBC investigation can reveal.

The fake company directors are paid to put their names to official paperwork, and have dozens of businesses listed on Companies House, but are not involved in running them.

Two undercover news hounds, themselves Kurdish, posed as asylum seekers and were told how easy it would be for them to take over and run a shop and make big profits selling illegal vapes and cigarettes.

We have linked more than 100 mini-marts, barbershops and car washes, operating from Dundee to south Devon, to the crime network. But a financial crime investigator told the BBC he believes it goes much wider.

The Home Office said it will investigate the BBC's findings.
Reaction to BBC investigation - crime network 'pull factor' for illegal migrants colonists, say MPs

Reacting to our investigation, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, said: "Illegal working and linked organised criminality creates an incentive for people to come here illegally. We will not stand for it."

For the first time, we can reveal the inner workings of a criminal system that lets asylum seekers work in plain sight on UK High Streets, in mini-marts that mainly profit from illegal cigarettes and vapes.

One man told us weekly takings from illicit tobacco at his shop could be "sometimes, up to 3,000".

The men who facilitate it all - so-called "ghost directors" - each have dozens of businesses listed on Companies House but in many cases are not involved in running them.

"The shop doesn't belong to me, it's just under my name," one of them told our undercover news hounds.

Many of the businesses are dissolved after about a year, and then re-opened with small changes to official paperwork.

These businesses have "all the red flags" associated with organised criminality, a financial crime investigator told the BBC.

During our investigation we found:

  • An asylum seeker, who says his claim was rejected, trying to sell a shop to our undercover news hound for 18,000

  • A Kurdish Facebook group listing dozens of mini-marts, barbers, car washes and takeaways for sale

  • "Ghost directors" charging illegal workers up to 300 per month to register mini-marts in their names

  • Kurdish builders offering to build elaborate hiding spaces for illegal cigarettes and vapes that would fool sniffer dogs

  • Asylum seekers, who said the Home Office had left them in legal limbo, working 14-hour shifts in mini-marts for as little as 4 per hour

The two Kurdish journalists involved in our investigation know that tensions over immigration are high. They worry that such coverage of illegal activities within the Kurdish community could inflame hostilities.

One of them is a former asylum seeker himself, and says "I wanted to play a role in uncovering these illegal activities [...] to say loudly that they don't represent us."
Posted by:Skidmark

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