Gang guilty of running 'club class' illegal migrant service

A gang which made thousands of pounds by offering a "club class" service to hundreds of illegal immigrants they brought into Britain were jailed yesterday for a total of more than 20 years.

A gang which made thousands of pounds by offering a "club class" service to hundreds of illegal immigrants they brought into Britain were jailed yesterday for a total of more than 20 years.

Immigrants from India paid £8,000 each to be smuggled 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 West Midlands-based gang members, who were finally caught in a joint British and French surveillance operation codenamed Gular.

The organisers - Shakean Chahal, 29, Talbinder Gill, 29 and Lee Ludbrook, 43 - were each jailed for five years at Canterbury Crown Court for their part in the conspiracy.

Chahal drove a Ferrari and a Range Rover and accumulated more than £200,000 in assets, which officials were trying to seize.

Members of the gang were arrested in June last year 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 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 as part 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". 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, while 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.

Detectives said the gang's operation was just one of many being run as part of a larger network in Paris allegedly organised by a "major player" who was facing trial in France.

It was thought that the immigrants, from the Punjab area of India, raised the money by selling land and businesses in their home country to reach Britain via safe houses in the French capital.