UK to Target People Smugglers With Sanctions to Stem Migration
(Bloomberg) -- Keir Starmer plans to set up a sanctions regime targeting people smugglers as the UK prime minister seeks to deliver on an electoral pledge to “smash the gangs” helping asylum seekers enter the country via irregular routes.
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The new program aims to tackle criminal immigration networks by stemming their financing, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said late Wednesday in a statement, billing the plan as the first set of sanctions in the world aimed specifically at people smugglers. The new law will allow officials to seize financial assets and impose travel bans on people or companies they have reasonable grounds to suspect are involved in people trafficking.
That means that if entities are suspected of providing materials to help smuggling gangs transport people, or if individuals buy assets such as real estate with the proceeds from the operations, they can be hit even if they live outside the UK.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy will announce the new regime, which the government intends to come into force later this year, in a speech on Thursday setting out his approach to UK foreign policy.
“We must dismantle the crime gangs facilitating breaches of our borders,” Starmer said in a statement. “By crippling illicit finance rings allowing smugglers to traffic vulnerable people across Europe, we will deliver” on promises to secure UK borders.
Starmer hopes to make tackling irregular migration a key theme of his administration and used his New Year’s speech to repeat a pledge to reduce immigration into the UK through both legal and irregular routes. More than 36,000 people entered the country via small boats across the English Channel last year, the second highest annual tally, according to Home Office statistics.
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