It is €15,000 (£12,500) for the whole “package” we are informed of and this is what we are going to look at in detail. For that we would be provided with an inflatable dinghy, an outboard motor and 60 life jackets to cross the English Channel.
This is the “good price” offered by two small-boat smugglers to an undercover BBCNews journalist in Essen – a western German city where many migrants live or pass through.
A BBCNews investigation that took five months has revealed a strong link between Germany and the deadly business of human trafficking through the English Channel.
While the new UK government aims to ‘bash the gangs’, Germany has transformed into a hub for storing boats and engines to be used in cross-Channel crossings, according to Britain’s National Crime Agency.
When filmed secretly, smugglers told us that they have many boats in several hidden sheds – as they run around with German police.
This year is already the deadliest for migrants crossing the Channel, according to UN data, and over 28,000 people have arrived in Britain this year in small, overcrowded boats.
Our undercover reporter is outside the central station in the city of Essen.
He is wearing a secret camera and playing a role of a Middle Eastern migrant who wants to get to the UK with his family and friends.
He cannot be disclosed to the public for security reasons and therefore we will call him Hamza.
He approaches a man. It is someone Hamza has known for months, by phone calls through WhatsApp after getting his number from a friend in the migrants’ group – but it is their first time to meet.
The man in the picture – or at least the man who has presented himself to us – is called Abu Sahar.
Since Hamza called him, they have been talking about how Sahar can assist in getting a dinghy to the south coast of England.
Hamza has said to him that bad experiences with the smuggling gangs in the Calais region have forced him and his family and friends to attempt to cross on their own – which is rare.
Sahar has already forwarded a video of an inflated dinghy which according to him is “new”, available and stored in a warehouse in the Essen area.
He will go on to supply more footage including other, similar looking, boats as well as outboard engines being fired up.
Hamza has said he wants to check the quality of the items on offer himself and that is why he has insisted on an in-person meeting.
A BBCNews team is around observing Hamza’s activities in case of a hitch or we have to pull him out.
While the two men are walking in the centre of Essen, Sahar says it is ‘dangerous’ to go to the warehouse to see the boat even though he says it is only 15 minutes drive away.
When Hamza asks about why the boats are kept in this part of Germany, Sahar uses the words “safety” and “logistics”.
It is only four to five hours drive from the Calais area – close enough to get boats there quickly, but not in the area of the heavily patrolled beaches of northern France.
Although police raids do occur, the enabling of people-smuggling is not strictly unlawful in Germany if it is to a third country which is outside the EU, as the UK is now following Brexit.
The interior ministry in Berlin responds that, since Germany and the UK are not geographically contiguous, “there is no direct smuggling” – but a UK Home Office source expressed “frustration” about the German legal landscape to the BBCNews.
Sahar takes Hamza to a cafe where they take coffees and light cigarettes, but they change their table because there are some Arabic speakers nearby and Sahar does not want anybody to hear what they are talking.
Just over 35 minutes later, Sahar gets up out of his chair and tells Hamza: “Hush, he’s here.”
A man in his early 40s, neat and clean shaven, is wearing a baseball cap. He is called “al-Khal”, which is translated as “the Uncle” – this is an Arabic word that denotes a man who is worthy of respect.
Khal is joined by another man who will hardly speak, but seems to be Khal’s bodyguard.
Some handshakes are made before Khal starts speaking to the waitress in German and then reverts to Arabic, which is his fluent language.
Hamza is asked to give his phone and it is put on another table for identification.
The bodyguard sits next to Hamza and will spend most of the next 22 minutes looking straight at him.
In the meeting, due to the German law, BBCNews is allowed to record video but not the audio.
Our reporting of it is therefore partly based on the memory of our undercover journalist – a common technique in German investigative journalism.
This is supported by messages, call records and voice notes between Hamza and the smugglers.
“Don’t raise your voice,” Khal ordered as he grabbed Hamza’s arm and forced him to tell the man in front of him his name and purpose for being there.
Hamza renews the cover story and it seems to be working.
He also points out that the boat purchase they are currently considering may not be unlawful in any way since there are legal ambiguitities in German law.
He also points out that the boat of which they are now speaking about to buy may not be illegal at all because there are some ambiguitites in the German law.
However, Khal does not accept that proposition.
“Who told you that?” he asks. “It’s not legal.”
If there are legal technicalities in Germany regarding boat-smuggling, it seems these men understand they are part of a larger crime syndicate.
During their coffee, Khal sometimes pokes Hamza in the chest as the smugglers reveal they have approximately 10 warehouses in the Essen region.
That, it is implied, is a way of splitting their stock in case of a police raid – which there was a “few days ago”.
At times, it is said, they receive a tip-off that the police are on their way and they provide them with ‘bait’ – in this case food items are seized but not enough to affect the functioning of the racket.
The smugglers discuss how they are capable of delivering equipment to Calais within “three, four hours” which means they are daring enough to navigate through motorways not the byways.
This makes it possible for boats to be delivered within a morning or afternoon depending on a favorable weather that increases crossing attempts and therefore demand.
Research by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime indicates that boats are moved by vans or cars from Germany, Belgium or the Netherlands to the French coast with Germany acting as a major transit hub.
Many of them, they discovered, were made in China and shipped by container to Turkey before being transferred to other parts of Europe.
One of the report authors, Tuesday Reitano, says that Germany has become a hub for various reasons, including a stronger ‘anti-smuggling controls’ in France that has forced more and better organized gangs to travel longer distances.
She also thinks that the German authorities are not as concerned about the problem of Channel crossings “because it is not a problem that is on their doorstep”.
Returning to the cafe, Khal seems to be convinced that Hamza is genuine and begins to discuss finances.
His choice is that Hamza should accept the “package” deal which will cost €15,000 (£12,500).
That entails picking up the boat near Calais together with an engine, fuel, pump and 60 life jackets – more than Hamza said he needs but that is the blanket offer and one that would be more likely to be made to a direct smuggler organising the crossings in France.
The profits of those smugglers are potentially ‘extraordinary’ if one takes into account that the adults are being charged around €2000 ($ 2660) for one trip with dozens of people on board – as per Global Initiative.
Khal says if a deal is signed now, he could bring a boat that is only 200m (655ft) from the French coast by tomorrow.
Khal and Sahar also mention a “new crossing point” they have located and although they do not say where it is, it is evident that it is not too controlled by the French.
There is a second, and cheaper, option that Hamza has been trying to push for all along.
For roughly €8000 (£6,670) Hamza could go and collect the boat himself from here in Essen and take it to northern France on his own.
If you are caught, the smugglers warn him, it is not our fault.
Talk shifts to how Hamza would fund the gang, once he has made up his mind on what to do.
Khal wants the cash to be paid in Turkey because, as he says, “all the stuff” is imported from there.
The money, he says can be sent through Hawala system – an informal remittance system that uses agents to transfer cash across borders.
Later, Hamza receives an account name on the WhatsApp application.
Other messages and voice notes in Arabic, which were sent after the cafe meeting include Sahar describing brands of outboard motors. He “loves” Mercury ones, he says, although “if there is Yamaha, I prefer Yamaha”.
He says that they can ‘drop and stash’ the gear, meaning it can be buried close to a crossing point, Boulogne is better because, ‘Calais, it’s tough’.
In another sales pressure technique, he is informed that the smugglers have ‘limited’ stock but many customers.
Khal is more careful in his communications, but in one voice note, forwarded by Sahar, he expresses unease after meeting Hamza, saying: “Your friend, he seems not OK.”
Nevertheless, he instructs Sahar to get a decision from Hamza about whether he wants to buy a boat or not: “Ask him in the next one or two hours.”
At last, Hamza informs them that he cannot proceed with the agreement anymore.
The BBCNews never offered any money to these men, whose identities we have not been able to ascertain beyond doubt.
We have provided the Chair of the National Independent Lifeboat Association, Neil Dalton with footage we have been sent of the boats and he has commented that he would not go in a “duck pond” in such boats.
Describing one as a ‘death trap’, he says it would be ‘appalling dangerous’ to cram dozens of people into these boats for a Channel crossing because of what looks like a ‘highly fragile’ structure.
However, diplomats are keen to stress that relations between Germany and the UK on countering these gangs have become better.
Seizures and arrests have occurred in Germany jointly with other countries – and so-called “accompanying crime”, like violence or money laundering, can be prosecuted within Germany.
In February a large raid was conducted in which boats, engines, life jackets and life preservers for children were confiscated in Germany with 19 arrests but these were made under Belgian and French warrants. Another trial, similar to the one in 2022, is ongoing in France.
A UK Home Office spokesperson said this to the BBCNews : “The government is intensifying efforts with countries, including Germany, to combat the criminal smuggling gangs, but there is always more that can be done in partnership.”
A joint action plan is being prepared with Germany and the newly created Border Security Command of the UK will be “crucial” in breaking the syndicates, they said.
The same can be said of the French authorities.
“It is crucial for the Germans to show that these boats are related to offences on our coasts so that they can act,” Pascal Marconville, a prosecutor in northern France, said to the BBCNews this month.
Berlin’s interior ministry said to the BBCNews that cooperation is “very good” and that the German authorities can act on the request of the UK.
A spokesman also said that it is not against the law to assist in smuggling from Germany to the UK, but it is a crime to help smuggle into Belgium or France, where the crossings occur.
On the coastlines of north-eastern France one can come across the wreckage of the attempted crossings on boats that, according to the National Crime Agency, are getting ‘increasingly risky and flimsy’.
These beached dinghies and life jackets may seem like scrap, but someone will have invested a fortune on what they believed would be a ticket to a better life.
It is a trade in misery, desperation and, in the worst cases, death – but one that is far from dead and buried: it is alive and well in the heart of Europe.
