SMUGGLERS
Production Notes
Embargo: Not for publication before March 28
A compelling new documentary series for ITV1 reveals the alarming scale and relentless
tide of smuggling at UK Borders. We are the prime destination for smuggled cigarettes in
Europe and Europe’s leading consumers of cocaine.
The UK is a country of choice for ‘Smugglers’. An island with 12,000 miles of coastline and
some of the busiest ports in Europe, historically we have always been a tempting target for
Smugglers. In past centuries, the commodities were rum and brandy, now organized
criminal gangs make billions of pounds smuggling drugs, people and cigarettes.
Wild Pictures, the makers of the acclaimed documentary series In the Line of Fire,
Holloway, Wormwood Scrubs, and The Zoo, gained unique access to follow the work of
specialist UK Border Agency and Police teams as they try to disrupt the smugglers’ multi
billion pound trade.
Officers candidly reveal they are fighting an uphill battle. Organised crime gangs
continually modify their smuggling techniques changing routes, methods and mules in an
effort to beat border controls. Following officers as they seize huge consignments of drugs
hidden in underwater attachments on ships or cleverly concealed in secret compartments
on lorries, Smugglers shows the extraordinary and sophisticated lengths the gangs will go
to beat the system.
Officers acknowledge that any success is often short-lived; what drugs they stop is just the
tip of the iceberg. It’s estimated that for every one seizure of drugs another nine get
through undetected.
Assistant Director of Criminal and Financial investigations for the UK Border Agency,
Malcolm Bragg says: “We cannot rely on law enforcement alone as being the answer to
this problem. Law enforcement has got an exceedingly important role to play, but then so
has education, so has health. We have to put that together, and we have to try and find a
solution to a problem that has evaded us for certainly the 40 years that I have been doing
it.”
The series also shows the myriad of ordinary people who try to flout the law and sneak
illegal contraband into the UK. Some are holiday makers chancing their arm at cigarette
and tobacco smuggling as they know the penalties are low and the rewards are high. The
holiday makers contribute to a big national problem, an estimated 1 in 9 cigarettes we
smoke are smuggled and nearly 50% of all hand rolling tobacco in the UK is also
smuggled.
Smugglers also reveals the more sinister side, showing how middle age men laden with
debt, can get lured into the drugs trade, taking huge risks for nominal fees as drug mules.
One drug mule featured in the series was paid just £900 for attempting to smuggle
£500,000 worth of high purity cocaine. He is now in prison on a six year sentence.
The figures at stake for the smuggling gangs are astronomical. Organised crime gangs
flood the British market with nine billion cigarettes a year, resulting in an estimated £2
billion in lost revenue to our recession hit economy. The illicit trade in narcotics in the UK is
worth well over £7 billion a year.
People smuggling is just as lucrative. Thousands of people and young children are
trafficked into the UK to work as sex slaves, to act as ‘farmers’ in illegal cannabis farms or
are forced onto our streets to beg and steal, all as part of their ‘bonded labour’ to pay off
their ‘debt’ to the smuggling gangs.
This series shows how the more sophisticated smuggling gangs are diversifying into
lucrative new markets, and how the scale of their operations is a constant threat to UK’s
borders.
Programme One
The UK’s roll on, roll off ferries present the greatest opportunity to the smugglers. At ports
like Dover the numbers are stacked in their favour. This first programme in the series
follows the officers of the UK Borders agency as they deal with wave after wave of
smugglers.
A new ferry arrives in Dover every 20 minutes. 7,000 lorries and 10,000 cars pass through
every day. 80 billion pounds of legitimate trade comes through every year, hidden
amongst it, is millions of pounds of smuggled goods.
Malcolm Bragg, the Assistant Director of Criminal and Financial Investigations for the UK
Border Agency reveals: “Hardly a day goes by that we don’t find something, whether that
is illegal immigrants, whether that is drugs, whether that is cigarettes, tobacco,
pornography, firearms, every single ferry will have either a lorry, a car, a van or a person
on it trying to smuggle something into this country through Dover.”
The film follows officers of the UK Border Agency whose suspicions have been raised by
one driver returning from Holland. The driver is 62 year old Stuart McDonald, a retired taxi
driver from Birmingham. An examination of his vehicle reveals what appears to be a gun
shaped package. A more detailed search uncovers it’s actually 5 kilos of cocaine with an
estimated street value of £200,000.
The amount he was smuggling, is a small fraction of the two and half tonnes of cocaine
seized annually at UK Borders. But what officers stop is just the tip of the iceberg. It is
estimated that a further 25-27 and a half tonnes of cocaine, gets into the UK undetected
every year.
In court, McDonald said that he was forced to take part in smuggling due to threats to him
and his family. He pleaded guilty and received a four and half year sentence.
Malcolm Bragg says: “We often find that people in his position will not admit at the
beginning the full extent of what they have done. They quite often don’t even want to be
honest with themselves, they kind of want to forget about it. They kind of have convinced
themselves that everything is okay, they are going to get away with it, and then when they
are caught, then the reality of what they have done, and the position that they have found
themselves in sinks in.”
Cigarette and tobacco smuggling may appear to be a low level crime but it costs us an
estimated £2 billion pounds in lost revenue every year. The programme shows how British
holiday makers try their hand at duty free smuggling.
In Southampton, Keith Tulley and his team brace themselves for a cruise liner returning
from the Canary Islands.
Keith Tulley says: “The actual notion of the average British smuggler is that it is almost a
tradition that stems back from the culture that was developed in Cornwall and 300 years
ago and it is still present today. It is regarded almost as sport.”
One woman is caught with 20 times the maximum allowance of cigarettes as she leaves
the cruise liner, claiming they were all for her own use. The cigarettes are confiscated and
she is given a caution. An estimated eight billion cigarettes get through undetected every
year.
Smugglers films with officers at Harwich on the east coast of England. It’s one of The UK’s
smaller ports but a port of choice for organised crime.
Crime gangs invest a huge amount of money and time to hide their merchandise, creating
sophisticated hiding places in the lorries known as concealments.
The UK Border Agency’s latest weapon against the smuggling gangs is a multi-million
pound x-ray scanner. It can detect the smallest alteration to the lorry or the load inside.
UK Border Agency team leader at Harwich, Giles Young says: “We had a van load about
six months ago of clothing and they ran it through the scanner because they weren’t happy
with it and they couldn’t unload it. There were eight people in boxes inside the clothing. I
think they were Iranian nationals. But literally they come up beautifully on the scan. You
could see these little figures hunched over on the cardboard boxes.”
The cameras follow Giles Young and his officers as the machine scans one lorry and
detects a secret compartment in the floor of the trailer.
After meticulous inspection of the vehicle packages containing 160 kilos of cannabis are
found which have an estimated street value of £400,000. Organised criminals factor such
losses into their business plans. The UK Market remains incredibly attractive to the
smugglers it’s estimated to be worth over £1 billion a year.
The big consignments of drugs arrive on UK’s shores in container ships, fishing vessels
and yachts. The UK Border Agency has five Cutters which patrol the sea lanes to stop and
search vessels they suspect may be carrying illegal cargo.
The programme follows a Cutter Crew as they stop a huge container ship off the South
East Coast, after receiving intelligence that it is carrying a large consignment of drugs. Ten
specially trained search officers board the target vessel along with a team of divers from
the Metropolitan Police who search the hull.
They find three boxes attached to the ship below the waterline, containing 150 kilos of
cannabis with an estimated street value of half a million pounds.
Despite record yields of home-grown cannabis, there’s still a healthy market for the
smugglers. An estimated 300 tonnes a year are needed to meet demand in the UK.
Officer Mark Jefferson says: “The opposition in South America are so well organised, and
have so much money that they are able to just follow ships around the world, waiting for
what is an opportune moment to put divers down and recover the goods.”
Programme Two
Tonight’s second programme follows the UK Border Agency as they seize a huge
consignment of drugs at Harwich, a port of choice for organised crime.
Located just six hours away from Holland -a warehouse for heroin and cocaine in Europe,
Harwich is a key trans-shipment point for the drug smuggling gangs.
UK Border Agency detection team leader at Harwich, Giles Young says: “We don’t see
opportunist smugglers here, not in the way that perhaps you would have ten to fifteen
years ago. It’s big business, it’s thoroughly organised, it’s planned. They try to control their
product from the moment it’s paid for in Holland until the distribution point in the UK, and
there’s a vast organisation that does that.”
As wholesale prices for cannabis in Holland are on average a third of what they are in the
UK Crime gangs can afford to lose two shipments to UK Border Agency officers and still
break even on the third.
The crime gangs don’t smuggle the drugs themselves. Lorry drivers are either paid off or
are unwitting mules who have no idea about the drugs which have been hidden in their
vehicles.
The cameras follow the investigation of one lorry as it goes through the X-ray scanner. The
investigation identifies suspicious boxes which when opened by officers reveal a huge
haul of cannabis and what is suspected to be heroin. This one seizure is worth more than
half a million pounds.
Giles Young explains that what will hurt the criminals most is not so much the loss of funds
from a seizure like this but not being able to supply the drugs. Other groups may move into
their areas, where they can supply the dealers. So it’s their reputation that is almost more
damaged than they are financially.
The major drug smugglers avoid UK ports, singling out deserted beaches along the 12,000
mile coastline instead. The UK Border agency deploys five Cutters to patrol the sea lanes
and shores to try to stop them.
The programme shows Cutter officers stopping and searching a suspect yacht from the
Caribbean. They have information that the yacht may be carrying several hundred kilos of
cocaine. The Captain has criminal convictions for smuggling large quantities of cannabis in
the 1970’s and 1980’s. Officers find a trace of cocaine below deck. But four days of
meticulous investigation by 20 officers, six divers and sniffer dogs reveals nothing more.
Dover is one of Britain’s busiest ports, with more than 40 ferries arriving daily. Stopping
drug smuggling through the port is a top priority. Some crime gangs try to beat the border
controls by splitting drugs into small loads and working on the ‘little but often’ theory, using
‘mules’ to carry the contraband.
The cameras follow UK Border agency officers as they search the vehicle of a man who
has been stopped in France on suspicion of smuggling. The man is travelling with his wife,
and they look like an ordinary couple returning from a day trip. An inspection of their car
reveals two kilos of what is at first suspected to be amphetamine, but later turns out to be
half a million pounds of high purity cocaine.
The man says he was paid just £900 to courier the cocaine. He pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to six years in prison.
One of the officers, Micky Smith explains: “Drug gangs pick on vulnerable people who are
in need of money. If they are in debt, if they need money, drugs gangs will offer people the
opportunity. It’s a bit like buying a lottery ticket I suppose you either make it through or you
don’t.”
Just 48 hours later another similar well dressed, middle aged couple are brought into
custody, when 2.5 kilos of heroin with an estimated street value of £100,000, is found in
their car. The man is also jailed for six years.
As the two couples came from the same town, UK Border Agency officers reveal that they
suspect an organised crime gang is at work in that area and is making substantial sums of
money from the drug smuggling.
With the close proximity of the Kent coastline to Europe, at one point the distance is just
22 miles, it is a target for smugglers carrying anything from drugs to people.
Detective Sergeant Simon Hiscock, who runs a police maritime unit patrolling Kent’s
coastline says: “Last year there were two operations run by Kent police, one on this
particular stretch of beach which was importation of cocaine and the other one further
round towards Rye, which again was the importation of cocaine.”
The two operations netted 1.5 million pounds worth of cocaine and resulted in prison
sentences on 10 men totalling more than100 years.
The programme follows a night time operation by the police maritime unit and the UK
Border agency as they target drug and people traffickers. They have intelligence to
suggest a small vessel is smuggling people off the French coast. But when it is stopped
checks reveal the vessel has been transporting cross Channel swimmers.
The smuggling gangs are dynamic, diversifying into lucrative new markets like counterfeit
cigarettes and clothing. The relentlessness and scale of their operations continue to
threaten our borders.
Assistant Director of Criminal and Financial investigations for the UK Border Agency,
Malcolm Bragg says: “We cannot rely on law enforcement alone as being the answer to
this problem. Law enforcement has got an exceedingly important role to play, but then so
has education, so has health. We have to put that together, and we have to try and find a
solution to a problem that has evaded us for certainly the 40 years that I have been doing
it.”
Series Producer: Tom Anstiss
Executive Producer: Paul Hamann
Smugglers is a Wild Pictures production for ITV1
For further information please contact:
Naomi Phillipson
07917 444524
naomi.phillipson1@btinternet.com
For pictures please contact:
Peter Gray
peter.gray@itv.com
The series will be available to preview on Ready to Air