Hawala money dealers have become vital intermediaries between migrants and smugglers, facilitating payments that cannot be traced by security and law enforcement agencies. However, the difficulty of tracing hawala payments has also made it a banking system that enables human trafficking and money laundering.
This joint investigation, carried out over the past year by a team of six journalists along the migration route from northern Iraq to the UK, exposes how Europe's and the UK's migration policies have caused migrants to fall prey to unscrupulous smugglers and trust hawala as the only way to mitigate the risk of being scammed.
The journalists conducted investigations on the ground in Erbil and Ranya (Iraq), Istanbul (Turkey), Athens (Greece), southern Italy, Calais and Dunkirk (France), and London (UK). They also conducted covert investigations on Telegram and Facebook, where alleged traffickers offer their services to people seeking refuge in Europe.
The team also spoke to over 50 sources, including smugglers (some of whom were undercover), hawala bankers, refugees, families of victims of boat sinkings in the English Channel in November 2021, hawala experts, and security and judicial sources from various countries.
Photo: ©Andrés Mourenza
