Myrteza Hilaj, 50, and Kreshnik Kadena, 37, smuggled migrants into Essex from France on light aircraft (Picture: NCA/PA)
A pair of Albanian nationals used a plane to illegally smuggle migrants from France into the UK, a court heard.
Myrteza Hilaj, 50, and Kreshnik Kadena, 37, were part of an organised Albanian crime group involved in facilitating illegal migration, money laundering, drug trafficking and the supply of counterfeit documents.
It follows an eight-year investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA), codenamed Operation Micropus, which investigated at least nine journeys of Albanian migrants in 2016 and 2017.
These were all linked to Hilaj and three involved light aircraft while others involved migrants getting into the back of lorries.
Southwark Crown Court heard how Kadena acted as his assistant and was primarily involved in smuggling migrants using the light aircraft.
The group’s pilot would take off from North Weald Airfield in Epping Forest, Essex, and fly to Le Touquet airport in France, to collect three to four migrants to smuggle into the UK on each trip.
The pilot would then fly to Stapleford Aerodrome, also in Epping Forest, where the migrants would leave the plane and be collected by Kadena.
Hilaj came to the UK in the 1990s and previously worked as a restaurant owner and security guard and supplied the migrants with fake documents.
Hilaj was the main force behind illegally smuggling migrants into the UK (Picture: NCA/PA)
Kadena acted as an accomplice for Hilaj (Picture: NCA/PA)
A false identity counterfeiting group provided him with many of these – including five individuals who produced ‘tens of thousands’ of such documents at a facility in Stratford for use in banking fraud.
Hilaj also sourced documents from a man operating a passport factory out of his loft in Battersea, London.
The NCA said migrants would pay ‘up to £10,000’ for transit into the UK and then ‘a few hundred pounds extra’ for fake documents.
The pair were caught having a ‘fallout meeting at a local pub’ following a police interception in France on July 17 2017.
They were arrested on July 26 2017 at their home addresses by the NCA.
When they were arrested, messages were found on Hilaj’s phone where he had corrected typo errors on false documents.
Online searches regarding the aircraft interdiction on July 17 were also found.
British pilot David Green and facilitator Edward Buckley were jailed in France in 2017 for the light aircraft operation which ran from June to July in 2017.
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Saju Sasikumar, NCA senior investigating officer, told a media briefing: ‘He (Hilaj) was putting people in the right places at the right time and contacting the right people to get them to where they needed to be.’
He said the case was ‘one of the few examples of light aircraft being used’ by people smuggling gangs.
Mr Sasikumar added: ‘This investigation has dismantled an organised crime group who not only facilitated illegal migration but provided a complete service to those they helped into the country, ensuring they could gain work and access services illegally.
‘Today’s convictions may mark the end of this particular operation but our work to tackle the threat from organised immigration crime is only increasing.’
The NCA also confirmed the investigation resulted in the closure of four forgery factories, with confiscation orders of just under £1 million being issued.
A wider investigation also involved the seizure of four tonnes of cannabis and 30 kilos of cocaine.
Hilaj and Kadena were both found guilty today of facilitating the commission of a breach of immigration law.
They will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on May 17.
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