Bulgaria seizes 125 boats bound for English Channel people smugglers

UK's National Crime Agency has been working with Bulgaria to choke supply of boats to traffickers

An inflatable dinghy carrying around 65 migrants crosses the English Channel this year. Getty Images

More than 100 boats along with engines and other parts bound for English Channel people smugglers, have been seized at Europe’s busiest land border, UK law enforcement has said. The equipment was on its way from Turkey to northern France where it would have been assembled by people traffickers to transport migrants to Britain, but was intercepted in Bulgaria.

According to the National Crime Agency, the UK’s equivalent of the FBI, 125 boats were seized as well as 128 outboard engines, more than 700 pumps and 300 rubber rings, over the past year. The NCA says it has been working with the Bulgarian National Customs Agency and Bulgarian Border Police to target the boat parts at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing, with the help of X-ray equipment and dogs trained to detect rubber.

So far this year, 47 people have lost their lives crossing the English Channel in flimsily built small boats that are increasingly overcrowded. The NCA’s Director of Intelligence Adrian Matthews described Bulgaria as “a key location” on the supply route for the criminal people smuggling networks involved in organising dangerous Channel boat crossings.

“Taking this equipment out before it can reach them not only disrupts their activities and hits their profits, but it also prevents these lethal boats and under-powered engines being used at sea where lives are at risk,” he said. The UK and Bulgaria are working “together to tackle organised crime and illegal migration”, Mr Matthews added.

“We are determined to continue doing all we can to disrupt and dismantle the people smuggling networks profiting from misery, wherever and however they operate.”

The UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to “smash the criminal boat gangs” almost immediately after taking office in July, in a bid to reduce the number of migrants crossing the English Channel.

However, groups working with migrants in northern France have said reducing the supply of boats has meant people smugglers are simply cramming more asylum seekers on to boats, leading to more deaths. The increased number of migrants per crossing has been attributed to a crackdown on the supply of boats.

The number of migrants packed on to each boat crossing the English Channel has reached an all-time high, making the journeys on the flimsy vessels even more perilous, analysis of data by The National has revealed. Boats now carry more than 60 asylum seekers on average, though that figure often reaches 70 and above, while the boats remain the same size as before.

Amelie Moyart, from the Utopia 56 NGO, told The National that people smugglers have found a way around efforts to cut supply. “Unfortunately what we have seen until now is that it has a low impact on the traffickers, who reorganise immediately,” she said.

“As long as there is demand from people to go to the UK, there will be an illegal network.” She said the “only solution” is to create “safe routes so the illegal network will disappear”.

NCA experts assess that the seizures will have denied the crime networks around £16.6 million in profit. Many of the parts needed for the boats are sourced in China and brought together by the people smuggling gangs in Turkey, who move them separately in a bid to avoid detection.

In an effort to cut off this supply, the UK began working with the Bulgarians in 2022. Bulgarian customs officers first set out to prove that the boats they find are intended for the French coast, where the crossings to Britain are launched. They left specific marks on the outboard engines and notified the NCA, who were then able to identify abandoned motors on the British shores.

When it was proved that the same boats were later used by smugglers organising the Channel crossings, imports into the EU of small inflatable boats, motors and life jackets were restricted. Customs officers with sniffer dogs inspect hundreds of lorries heading for Western Europe at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint each day after they pass through an X-ray scanner.

According to the officers, the special shape of the engines is easy to detect, and with time they have become better at recognising the bags containing the carefully folded dinghies. Dogs with the ability to sniff out rubber have also been deployed.

Chinese-made outboard engines were recently seized from a vehicle driven by a Bulgarian national who had hidden them in furniture and who declared he was transporting them for personal use. The driver was issued with a fine.