EXCLUSIVE The slick TikTok videos used by people smugglers bringing Albanians into UK: Glossy adverts promote cut price deals, guarantee ‘100% safe passage’ and top of the range inflatable boats with life-jackets
- EXCLUSIVE: Ruthless people smugglers use TikTok to urge Albanians into UK
- Videos accompanied by pulsing Albanian rap music to advertise cut price deals
- Crossings have surged in 2022, thanks in part to such glossy TikTok adverts
These are the slick TikTok videos used by ruthless people smugglers urging Albanians to cross the Channel to Britain.
With an accompanying pulsing soundtrack of Albanian rap music the footages advertise cut price deals for men, women and even children travelling from France.
Prices start from £3,000 for adults and £2,500 for children and all guarantee ‘100 per cent safe passage’ using top of the range rigid inflatable boats with life jackets provided.
Despite attempts to clamp down on crossings numbers are continuing to surge thanks to the glossy adverts posted on TikTok and on Albanian social media.
Even with the approach of winter and roughs seas and gale force winds the videos boast trips will ‘continue all year round whatever the weather’.
Albanians interested in making the journey across the Channel – which is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world – are urged to direct message the smugglers for details on the next crossings.
Working in conjunction with Kurdish gangs, Albanians are publicising the routes and taking money from would be travellers – while offering those that don’t have the cash the option of working for criminal gangs in the UK to pay the money back.
With an accompanying pulsing soundtrack of Albanian rap music, the slick TikTok clips advertise cut price deals for men, women and even children travelling from France
Prices start from £3,000 for adults and £2,500 for children and all guarantee ‘100 per cent safe passage’ using top of the range rigid inflatable boats with life jackets provided
Despite attempts to clamp down on crossings numbers are continuing to surge thanks to the glossy adverts posted on TikTok and on Albanian social media. Even with the approach of winter and roughs seas and gale force winds the videos boast trips will ‘continue all year round whatever the weather’
Based around the French port of Dunkirk, the gang masters use high speed rigid inflatable boats from China with powerful outboard motors to make the journey across the Channel in less than an hour.
The migrants arrive on the coast having made the trek overland from Albania either via Italy or across Serbia, Croatia and through onto Germany, Holland and Belgium.
A source in the Albanian capital Tirana told MailOnline: ‘The gangs are making thousands from people who want to cross and it’s all because in Albania wages and work are very low and non-existent.
‘An Albanian guy in a small village knows his prospects are poor if he stays in his country but he knows if he goes to the UK he can make a lot of money and send it back to his family.
‘It might be that he ends up working in a car wash or he might be recruited to work in a cannabis factory but not all Albanians are criminals many are hard working and will put in a day’s work for a good wage.
‘They are happy to do the building jobs and the menial ones that many British don’t want to do because they know at least they will be getting paid and making some money – which they have very little chance of doing in Albania.’
Prices have fallen from a high of £5,000 in the summer and Albanians now account for around 60 per cent of all crossings from France to Britain
One video posted on TikTok earlier this week showed migrants on a boat heading towards the white cliffs of Dover with a ferry sailing to France clearly visible in the background.
Migrants gesture outside the window as they board a coach from Manston immigration centre
Home Secretary Suella Braverman (third from right) is pictured inspecting a migrant processing centre in Dover, Kent amid a row over her department’s management of the Manston site
It advertised crossings for £3,000 while another showed a group made up of entirely young Albanian men on a boat making the double handed Albanian eagle symbol as they laughed and joked about heading to Britain.
The journey is exceptionally dangerous and the rising numbers come despite a tragedy last November when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of France leaving 27 dead.
While in September 57 mostly Albanian migrants had to be rescued by French coastguards after their vessel started to sink.
Albanians are able to enter France as they are from an EU applicant state and they can stay for 90 days without a visa and so many are even able to make the journey from Albania to the Channel coast on public transport using trains and ferries.
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