Huge part of UK £13.9bn foreign aid budget ends up in pockets of crime gang bosses who spend it on smuggling drugs, weapons and migrants into Britain
- Millions of pounds of foreign aid is ending up in with organised crime gangs
- National Crime Agency is investigating British money given to crime syndicates
- Home Office has revealed plan to tackle 4,600 syndicates profiting from crime
- Javid described illicit trade as ‘most deadly national security threat’ faced by UK
Home Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured) has unveiled a strategy aimed at reducing the £37billion-a-year cost of serious and organised crime to the British economy
Millions of pounds of foreign aid is ending up in the pockets of organised crime gangs, who smuggle drugs, weapons and illegal immigrants into Britain.
Huge sums of development money siphoned off by corrupt regimes assisted crime kingpins overseas, which then fuelled violence on the streets of the UK, ministers admitted yesterday.
It also emerged that the National Crime Agency, dubbed Britain’s FBI, was carrying out a ‘number’ of investigations into British cash being stolen or even handed to crime syndicates in poverty-stricken countries by their own corrupt regimes.
It raised fresh concerns over the inadvertent harm caused by the Department for International Development’s (DfID) £13.9billion aid budget, and how much was ending up in the wrong hands.
The farce was uncovered as Home Secretary Sajid Javid unveiled a strategy aimed at reducing the £37billion-a-year cost of serious and organised crime to the British economy.
The Home Office blueprint was intended to tackle 4,600 crime syndicates profiting from child sexual exploitation, the illegal drugs trade, human trafficking and cyber-crime.
Last night Tory MP Andrew Percy, a critic of the Government’s cast-iron pledge to spend at least 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid despite fierce opposition from backbenchers, said the findings were ‘deeply concerning’.
He said: ‘This is very worrying because it shows once again that we have got to get a better handle on foreign aid spending.’
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In the strategy, Mr Javid described the illicit trade as the ‘most deadly national security threat’ faced by the UK – and one that cost more British lives than terrorism or natural disasters. He said the tentacles of the crime networks stretched to Britain from all over the world, including the cocaine trade in Colombia and people traffickers in Africa.
In a foreword to the report, he said: ‘There is a direct link between the drugs being sold on our streets, including the violence linked to that trade, the networks trafficking vulnerable children and adults into the UK and corrupt politicians and state officials overseas who provide services and safe haven for international criminal networks.’
Mr Javid (pictured) said crime networks stretched to Britain from all over the world, including the cocaine trade in Colombia and people traffickers in Africa
The report said some criminals ‘think of themselves as untouchable’, adding: ‘Corruption… overseas it is a cause of conflict and instability which, if not tackled, can increase risks to the UK.’
Launching the Government’s Serious and Organised Crime Strategy yesterday, security minister Ben Wallace said: ‘Some of the NCA officers [based abroad] are focused on anti-corruption rather than maybe drug dealing or other issues. So it is something that we are tackling and it is of course a potential threat – criminals do it, members of government steal that money and we need to go after it.’
Lynne Owens, of the NCA, said the agency’s international crime unit was working closely with DfID.
Last December the Mail revealed that UK aid to corrupt countries soared by 10 per cent in 2016. Almost £1.39billion was sent to the world’s 20 most crooked states – up from £1.26billion in 2015.
n Emergency powers which have been used to strip terrorists of their passports will be aimed at McMafia-style crime kingpins under a crackdown.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid pledged to increase the use of laws to withdraw British citizenship to kick out ‘untouchable’ organised criminals with dual nationality.
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