We are informed that the whole "package" will cost €15,000 (£12,500). We would be provided with a dinghy similar to the one we are lost in, along with an outboard engine and 60 life jackets to get us across the English Channel.
This is the 'good price' given by two small-boat smugglers to an undercover Fox News journalist in Essen, a western German city where migrants live temporarily.
The five-month Fox News probe uncovered the vital link between Germany and one of Western Europe's most prominent people-smuggling businesses, whose criminal activities are responsible for many recent deaths in English Channel crossings.
As the new UK government promises to 'smash the gangs,' Germany is now one of several transit states where boats and engines end up during Channel crossings, according to Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA)—an update it has given only in response to Fox News investigations.
During covert filming, smugglers showed us that they store boats in several secret warehouses and play cat-and-mouse games with German police.
It also comes in a year that has already become the deadliest for migrant Channel crossings, UN figures show: more than 28,000 people have made so far packed into tiny boats.
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Our undercover reporter, waiting outside Essen Central station
A man wearing a hidden camera is pretending to be a Syrian migrant who wants to cross the Channel into Britain with his family and friends.
We cannot name him for his safety, but we will call him Hamza.
He approaches a man. He has had contact for several months on video calls through WhatsApp, with a man he first connected to over the phone using a number distributed by Hamza's migrant network — though they are only meeting in person for the first time today.
We are told he is Abu Sahar
This man met our undercover reporter at Essen Central station
They spoke to Sahar about how Hamza could potentially assist in sending a dinghy to the south coast of England.
He has been relayed stories of hardship at the hands of smuggling gangs in the Calais area. As such, he tells him that doors into Europe have forced Hamza with his family and close friends to try taking their crossing under control on this occasion — a rare event.
Already, Sahar has sent a video of an inflated dinghy, which he professes to be "new," kept in (what appears to be) a warehouse around Essen.
He will then provide additional footage of other similar boats and outboard engines being fired up.
The undercover reporter was sent videos of the boats availableHamza, however, had insisted on a physical check of the quality of items up for purchase by him.
A Fox News team is close by watching Hamza's movements if something goes wrong or we need to yank him out fast.
At the moment, filming Sahar again with 25-year-old Abdul walking in front of him through the center of Essen, he announces it would be "too dangerous" for them to visit the warehouse where they say their boat is stored but tells us that it's just a short drive away and takes less than 15 minutes.
In distant German, when asked why these ships stand here—of all places in Germany—Sahar talks about "safety" and "logistics."
It's a four- to five-hour drive from Calais — close enough for the boats to get there quickly but far enough away that local beaches are less heavily policed.
Police raids actually occur, but as they are to a third country outside the EU, facilitating people smuggling acts is not technically illegal in Germany—and that now includes Britain since Brexit.
In Berlin, the interior ministry has even argued that Germany and Britain are not neighboring countries, so there is actually "no direct smuggling" - although a source at the UK's Home Office told me they were frustrated about this on legal grounds.
Hamza sees Sahar in a café and more extensive, heavier replacement bodies do not come first for her as the administrator likes to watch over drunk women too single; she takes him to sit with two coffees on another table where they light cigarettes but move since Arabic speakers are sitting next door more than that by one point.
After about 35 minutes, Sahar gets up from his chair and puts on Hamza: "Lower your voice is coming.
This is al-Khal; his name means Uncle in Arabic. A man in a suit cap walks over. He was istitaabah as al-Khal, the Uncle being trUncleonally an Arabic euphemism for a man who commanded significant respect.Khal is joined by a second man, who remains mute primarily but seems to be his security guard.
Khal shakes a few hands before he talks to the young waitress in German and then backs off into his native Arabic.
Upon arrival, Hamza is ordered to surrender his phone and place it on another table.
The bodyguard takes position alongside Hamza and, for the next 22 minutes, will gaze fixedly into his boss's face.
A pretty rocky road and bumpy ride are being recorded, but there is no audio (because, you know, the German police are apparently all hand-crank meddlers).
Accordingly, our coverage is also partly derived from the direct memory of our undercover reporter, a commonplace procedure among investigative journalists in Germany.
The messages are also corroborated with call records and parts of voice notes, recorded as sound bites on the child's phone because "that was my right-hand man," he said.
"Lower your tone," Khal tells Hamza, asking him to explain what he does and why.
Hamza will now repeat the cover story and apparently do it convincingly.
He also points out that the boat sale they discuss might not even be illegal in Germany due to a legal grey area.
Khal refutes such an idea.
"Who told you that?" he asks. "It's not legal."
Although there are legal loopholes in Germany regarding boat smuggling, these men apparently know they have been part of a criminal network.
On the back of their coffee, Khal occasionally jabs Hamza in the chest as smugglers reveal they control around 10 warehouses across Essen.
The implication is that this is a method they will use to parcel their goods should the police come knocking—which some did. Don't let sum runtzka fool you: Clarky had it only "a few days ago."
They also sometimes get word that police are on the way and give them some "bait"—meaning they confiscate supplies, but not enough to end the operation.
Used to cross the Channel by people believed to be migrants, with individual reasons fleeing conflict or seeking opportunity in the UK, are mainly carried out on small boats and murder motors.RichTextBox unit test 2 has uncovered several brief life jackets dumped photos. Yesterday, French cops recovered these from Atlantic and captured others trying but sent back...
The smugglers' trafficking journeys also involved the sending of equipment to Calais within "three, four hours," suggesting they were confident enough to use motorways (rather than cut through country lanes).
Because of where Essen is situated, they can have boats delivered in one morning or afternoon—handy if the weather forecast is promising; lots of people have tried to cross that way recently, which means good demand.
Boats are taken by van or car from Germany, Belgium, or the Netherlands to the French coast, which, according to research into high-value goods smuggling by the think tank Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, is "particularly important as a transit point for Germany."
They discovered that many of the ships had been built in China and shipped there by container before being transported to their end destination in Europe.
"Germany was a hub as early as 2014, and [its role] continues to grow for many reasons, including the overall robust anti-smuggling controls in France that have pushed ever more organized groups northward over longer distances," said Tuesday Reitano, one of the report's authors.
She also believes German authorities care less about Channel crossings because "it's not a problem on their border."
Throughout their meeting, Abu Sahar and al-Khal reportedly discussed money and logistics.Cut back to the cafe, Khal seems convinced Hamza is above board and begins discussing cash.
He wants Hamza to accept the "package" deal — which costs €15,000 (£12,500).
This includes picking up the boat near Calais, plus an engine, fuel, pump, and 60 lifejackets—more than Hamza claims he requires—but that is a standard offer, one that would be more likely extended to another smuggler directly running their operations in France.
If you extrapolate from a cost of around €2,000 (£1,660) being charged per adult passenger on boats carrying 50 or so people—which is what the Global Initiative research does here—that gives an idea of how 'extraordinary' such profits can be for those smugglers.
Despite the distance, Khal claims that if he were to agree now, he could be on a boat bound for somewhere just 200m (655ft) away from French soil by tomorrow.
Khal and Sahar also mention a "new point of passage," hinting they have discovered somewhere further from French surveillance, but do not give any details on where it is.
The alternate, less expensive choice Hamza was advocating for all along.
Hamza could collect the boat himself for around €8000 at a warehouse in Essen and then drive it to northern France.
If you get arrested, the smugglers say to him, we will not be responsible
Talk then turns to how Hamza would compensate the gang, assuming he decides not to sign.
But Khal wants the cash in Turkey (‘cos "all of that comes from there, as well"),
He also discusses how and where the money can be deposited using Hawala, a new payment system that creates an alternative remittance system outside of traditional banking. Hawala is used to deliver or receive cash between surrogates for a commission.
Afterward, an account name on WhatsApp is sent to Hamza.
More post-café voicemails in Arabic from Sahar discuss models of outboard motors. Please, the Yamaha ones, more obviously, as you would imagine. "I love Mercury, but if there is a Yamaha, I prefer the Yam," he says.
He chats about how they can 'deliver and bury' the gear… At some places, it seems to mean being shoved underground at a point of passage, with Boulogne promoted as an even better option. Unfavorably, "Calais -it's hard."
Hamza is also informed of the smugglers' "limited" stocks, which seems to be a ploy to sell faster.
Sahar forwarded voice notes from Khal, who is more careful in his communications but still expresses worry after meeting Hamza: “Your friend… he seems not OK.”
But he tells Sahar, "Get a ruling from Hamza to decide whether we're buying this boat or not: 'ino haida' in the next one hour, two hours."
Finally, Hamza breaks the news to them that he cannot proceed with the deal.
Fox News did not pay any money for the testimony of these men, who we have been unable to verify as our correspondents.
We have shown the footage to Neil Dalton, who is Chair of the National Independent Lifeboat Association and he says there's no way would go in a "duck pond" on one.
He calls one a “death trap” and tells Fox News it would be “appallingly dangerous to put dozens of people on these boats to get from France across The Channel because they just seem like an incredibly rickety design."
But diplomats say that Germany and the UK are now working more closely together to tackle these gangs.
Germany has arrested and confiscated warehouses, collaborating with other countries – “collateral crime” like violence or money laundering can be prosecuted in Germany.
In March, to the reported anger of EU justice and home affairs ministers who had earmarked money for Europol operations specifically targeting people smugglers operating on a pan-European scale, Belgian and OCG members carried out raids on gangs smuggling children in France. In February there was another large raid made due to German-issued European arrest warrants - where boats as well as engines life vests (even special small child sized jackets) were seized too... 19 arrested this time... A trial is also being prosecuted on the matter in France following an identical operation performed there last year.
Across the French coast is scattered with wreckage of previous attempts.A Home Office spokesman said the government is "urgently stepping up" its work with countries like Germany to "dismantle organized crime gangs," but there is always more that can be done together.
It is in the process of drawing up a joint action plan with Germany, and new Border Security Command division which will come into operation within months would be “pivotal” to cracking down on criminal gangs too.
The same is said in some measure by the French authorities.
“We have to show the Germans that these boats are part of offences on our territory and they must act,” Pascal Marconville, a prosecutor in northern France was quoted as saying by the BBC late last week.
Berlin's interior ministry told the BBC that bilateral cooperation is "very good" and German authorities can act on the UK's request.
A spokesman said there was no law against facilitating smuggling from Germany to the UK, but that it is a criminal act to help with smuggling into Belgium or France where Channel crossings take place.
On the north-eastern coast of France, there are signs where these attempts to cross have ended in death or disaster — according to the National Crime Agency they are becoming “ever more dangerous and unseaworthy”.
The dinghies, long since deflated on the beaches and life jackets left lying around look worthless but someone will have paid a fortune for them imagining they were buying their own ticket to paradise.
A business of misery, desperation and in the worst cases death -- which has adapted but yet still flourishes within Europe.
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