People assume my Turkish barber shop is a money laundering front

A Turkish barber shop owner has complained that his '100 per cent legitimate' business is harmed by a minority of similar shops being fronts for money launderers and gangsters.

The recent explosion in Turkish barber shops along British high streets has fuelled widespread suspicions of organised criminal activity as numbers have increased by 50 per cent in the last six years to around 19,000.

And in some cases, say police, such suspicion is well founded.

Remarkably, reports the Local Data Company, while 665 'barbers' sprang up across Britain last year, making it the fastest-growing sector, no fewer than 752 ladies or unisex hairdressers closed in the same period, a statistic which would make anyone scratch their head in bafflement.

Reza Jafari, 31, who runs Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, has had enough of those who harbour suspicions about the massive rise in Turkish barbers but admits he can't explain himself why there are so many, particularly within the last five years.

Reza, who works with a business partner, but hopes to buy his shop out completely soon, is close to the spa town's high street.

Police have warned that along with car washes, Turkish barbers and nail salons are being used to 'oil the wheels' and launder cash for drugs or people-smuggling gangs.

But Mr Jafari insisted that the vast majority of barber shops were set up to make money and serve the local community.

Pasha was established eight-years ago on Camden Road, near the centre of Tunbridge Wells.

Mr Jafari, was born and raised in Tehran, Iran but his family come from Uzbekistan originally. He's been living in the UK for 16 years.

He said: 'People assume that if you own a Turkish barbers than you must have something to hide, that you have these links to organised crime.

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'But in most cases, it's not true. We just want to make money and have a livelihood like anyone else.

'But the small number of bad ones are harming the good ones. Those that exist just to launder cash for criminals reflect badly on us all because we get viewed the same way.

'I've worked as a barber since 2016 and worked on and off in this shop over the years. For the last few weeks I've been working as joint-owner and hopefully before the end of the year I'll have bought the business completely.

'I've seen the books and the paperwork. The shop is registered with HMRC and with Companies House. It's 100 per cent legitimate otherwise I wouldn't be buying it out.

'These sorts of businesses are a magnet for criminals, I know that. They are an easy way to wash dirty cash.

'I took a few years out from cutting hair and bought into a car wash in another part of Tunbridge Wells in 2022.

'We had a spot check from Kent Police. Four police officers turned up in plain clothes pretending that they wanted their car washed but really they wanted to have a look at the place.

'One of them showed his warrant card to a manager of mine, who rang me and told me that I needed to get there straight away as the police were there.

'When I arrived, I showed the officers into my office and one explained that they'd made an unannounced visit because car washes are used a lot by Albanian and Romanian people smuggling gangs.

'I told the police to call my accountant and gave them my HMRC number and an hour later they'd made all the relevant checks and said 'this is the cleanest car wash we've investigated'.

'I'm completely straight in business and always make sure everything is above board.

'But I have been living in Tunbridge Wells since 2009.

'Why that is, I can't tell you. I think the local council needs to explain why they continue to grant licenses to all these similar businesses. I guess there must be a demand.

'In Turkey, men go to the barbers not just to get their hair cut but to talk, socialise and get things off their chest. We build up a lot of trust with our customers.

'We do well, trade is slow at the start of the week but it picks up and by the weekend we're busy.

'And we take bank cards and not just cash, which is sometimes a red flag.'

From big cities to small towns, the growth in barber shops has been nothing short of phenomenal, as figures from the Local Data Company shows.

In the last decade, the average number of barbers per 10,000 people has more than doubled from 1.4 per 10,000 people to 3.1 in 2023.

And in parts of London and northern cities, the increase has been even more dramatic, with 19 Local Authorities having more than 4 Barber Shops per 10,000 people in 2023.

The question is: how many of the shops are legitimate businesses and what proportion are merely 'fronts' for organised crime groups to 'wash' their money.

The barber shops even became an election issue with former Reform UK leader Richard Tice posting in May: 'Seen the rise in the number of Barber shops everywhere? Many of them are fronts for money laundering. Only Reform UK will investigate this racket, and close them down.'

Former Metropolitan Police officer Ali Hassan Ali has seen the same trend. 'Ever since the Covid pandemic, we have seen a boom in barber shops opening up,' he told the Mail. 'A lot of these have thousands of pounds worth of equipment and no customers.

'While in many cases, the shops will be involved in legitimate business, there is strong reason to believe some, particularly some of the ones owned by Turks and Albanians, are linked to organised crime. This can be people or drug smuggling.'

'We know the people smuggling gangs in Calais have been traditionally operated by Kurds but they are now working with the Albanians.'

He added: 'The sudden increase of barber shops is really concerning because they are playing a part in funding human trafficking and in the misery that causes.'

Gangs of Kurds and Albanians, the nationalities which tend to dominate the Channel boat 'business' are said to be passing themselves off as genuine Turkish barbers in some cases.

It was the arrest of the lynchpin of a huge Channel people-smuggling ring in 2022 that first brought the activities of some of the more dubious 'barbers' to the attention of the National Crime Agency (NCA) - Britain's FBI.

Hewa Rahimpur, 30, and his gang of fellow Iranian Kurds were detained on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants into Dover from the French coast on small boats.

Rahimpur, who had arrived in the UK illegally and was granted asylum after claiming to have suffered 'political oppression' in his home country, was driving a top-of-the-range Mercedes when snared by police.

His gang had netted £13 million in cash from the crossings and it needed to be laundered somehow, so Rahimpur, a former barber, entered the hairstyling business a few years ago in Camden, North London.

He was extradited from the UK to stand trial in Belgium last year and is now serving an 11-year sentence for people-trafficking.

In a second high-profile trial the same year, 33-year-old Albanian Gul Wali Jabarkhel was accused of using his barber shop in Colindale, North London, as a base for a smuggling racket in which he tried to recruit lorry drivers to bring migrants to the UK hidden in their cargo.

After realising police were watching him, in 2020 Jabarkhel fled to Kabul, Afghanistan. It was only when he tried to return to the UK a year later by hiring one of the same lorry drivers he had used to smuggle in migrants, that two of his associates were caught handing over £7,500 for the deal at the London Gateway Services on the M1 and arrested for money-laundering offences.

Both of them claimed the money was to buy barbering equipment, but the authorities had been monitoring their mobile phones and text messages and knew this was false.

Jabarkhel was convicted alongside three others after a trial at Kingston Crown Court for his role in what the NCA described as a 'ruthless operation when human beings were little more than goods to profit from'.

Money-laundering salons have also been linked to terrorism. West London snipper Tarek Namouz, proprietor of Boss Crew Barbers, was sentenced to 12 years last year for sending £11,000 to Syria to 'purchase weapons and explosives' to use against President Assad's government forces.

The barber, who lived above his salon in Hammersmith, boasted to a prison visitor while on remand awaiting trial that he had actually managed to transfer £25,000 to the Islamic State supporters he was financing.

Detective Superintendent Charlotte Tucker of Wiltshire Police, a national expert on the surge in bogus barber shops, said recently: 'Establishments offering really low-price haircuts could be a red flag, indicating they are run by a criminal gang. Everyone loves a bargain, but if it's too good to be true, it probably is.'