People-smuggling gang to be sentenced

A gang which made thousands of pounds by offering a “Club Class” service to hundreds of illegal immigrants they brought into the UK were today due to be sentenced.

Immigrants from India paid £8,000 (€12,000) each to be smuggled in through ferry ports before being dropped off at their chosen destination as part of a “door-to-door” service.

They were “fed and watered” and transported in people carriers by the gang members, who were finally caught in a joint British and French surveillance operation codenamed Gular.

The smugglers, led by Shakean Chahal, 29, of Meeting Street, Wednesbury, and Talbinder Gill, 29, of Raven Road, Walsall – are said to have brought in around 400 illegal immigrants over two years.

Chahal lived the life of luxury from profits made out of the scam, driving a Ferrari, Range Rover and accumulating more than £200,000 (€299,000) in assets which the authorities are now trying to seize.

Talbinder Gill; his brother Kalbinder Gill, 30, of Lower Forster Street, Walsall; Paul Slater-Mason, 38, of no fixed address; Lee Ludbrook, 43, of Belmont Gardens, Moxley; and Chahal all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to facilitate illegal immigration at an earlier court hearing. They are due to be sentenced at Canterbury Crown Court today.

Most of the gang were arrested in June 2003 after police in Kent swooped on people carriers containing 14 illegal immigrants near Canterbury.

The swoop was the culmination of several months of work by detectives from the British National Crime Squad (NCS) and Kent Police who were first alerted when members of the gang were stopped at ports in 2001.

In June 2002, Kent Police charged some of the smugglers including Chahal but they were given bail by the courts and continued their lucrative venture.

Then in June 2003, British and French detectives - who had discovered that the gang were just one group operating out of a massive smuggling network based in Paris - followed a run made through Calais and Dover.

Detective Inspector Alan Edwards, of the NCS, said the gang had run a “slick operation” which involved counter-surveillance and a pretence to customs officers that their interest was in cheap alcohol.

He said: “A lot of the time that we would be watching them it would just be a booze run but they would do this to make themselves ‘known’ to customs officers.”

Then, when the gang’s white vans were being used to transport people, they would use “look-outs” perched on the cliffs at Dover to keep an eye on policing at the port, he said.

“It was a very slick operation and it worked a number of times,” he said.

However, detectives from Kent Police said the gang’s operation was just one of many being run out of a larger Paris network organised by a “major player” who is now facing trial in France.

It is thought the immigrants, from the Punjab area of India, were selling land and businesses in their home country to reach the UK via safe houses in the French capital.

Detective Sergeant David Mellin said immigrants who could not afford the Club Class service offered by the gang would use cheaper alternatives offered by other criminals.

One example was a separate swoop by Kent Police last year on a minibus carrying five illegal immigrants sandwiched in a tiny roof space in the ceiling of the vehicle.

The driver, 47-year-old Stephen Bargeman, of Avon Place, Reading, was jailed for four years in December 2003 for assisting unlawful immigration.