The ‘copycat’ factor is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of Turkish-style barber shops among drug gangs needing to launder money, an expert said today amid a new police crackdown.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has overseen dozens of raids on the stores over the past month, making a series of arrests and seizing tens of thousands of pounds in the process.
Officials said the operation had been prompted by an increase in intelligence reports linking barber shops to money laundering and other criminality. More than 750 opened in the UK last year.
Drugs expert Gary Carroll, who spent more than 10 years in law enforcement and now gives court testimony on street drug gangs, said there was a ‘copycat’ aspect to the exploitation of the Turkish barber format by criminals.
‘It’s a well trodden path that one crime group will just copy another when they see something is working,’ he told MailOnline.
‘And while we are increasingly moving away from cash as a society, barbers are still predominantly cash based – something they can get away with because the fees they charge are relatively low.
‘Then there’s the added attraction of this being an unregulated market that isn’t monitored by any government body. So there’s a lack of enforcement, without the one-off hygiene checks you’d get with food businesses.’
Shops marketing themselves as ‘Turkish’ barbers are often run by other nationalities, including Kurds and Albanians.
Even so, Mr Carroll drew a link between the rise of Turkish barber shops and the continuing popularity of heroin trafficked by gangs from the country and elsewhere in Asia.
‘When we look at money laundering there’s the well established affiliation with Turkish heroin, and the demand for that is certainly not decreasing in the UK,’ he said.
Officers at the NCA have joined forces with local police forces, immigration enforcement officers and HM Revenue and Customs inspectors to carry out raids in towns and cities across Britain.
One method has seen tax inspectors monitoring the number of chairs in use at a salon to work out if the profits declared by the business correspond to the number of customers.
One official told The Sunday Times that some streets have multiple barbers all declaring large takings despite being empty most days.
More than 750 barber shops opened in the UK last year, according to retail analytics company Green Street. Since 2018 the number has increased by more than 15 per cent to more than 18,000.
Traditional Turkish-style barbers are known for stylish haircuts – usually completed with a hot towel and cut-throat razor.
But the NCA probe points to growing concerns that criminals are infiltrating the trade.
‘Intelligence linking the use of barber shops, as well as other cash-intensive businesses, to money laundering and other criminality has risen in recent years,’ a spokesman said.
‘To respond to this threat, the NCA has co-ordinated multi-agency law enforcement action targeting barber shops where suspicious activity has been identified, and where there are possible connections to organised crime.
‘This has involved a large number of police forces across England and Wales, as well as other partners, including HMRC and the Home Office’s immigration enforcement department.’
In the UK barbers do not have to register as a business with Companies House, with the option to instead operate as a sole trader.
Some shops also let individual chairs to hairdressers.
The arrest of people smuggler Hewa Rahimpur in 2022 was one of the early signs of the dark reality behind the barber shop boom.
Rahimpur 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.
The 30-year-old, 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 he was caught by police.
His gang had netted £13million 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, 33-year-old Afghani 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.
Jabarkhel was convicted alongside three others after a trial two years ago 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’.
Some salons have also been linked to terrorism, with Tarek Namouz, proprietor of West London hairdresser Boss Crew Barbers, 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 send £25,000 to the ISIS supporters that he was financing.
However, growing allegations of criminality relating to barber shops has prompted a backlash among legitimate traders.
Last year, Reeza Jafari told MailOnline that he has had enough of those who harbour suspicions about shops like his.
The 31-year-old, who runs Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, said: ‘People assume that if you own a Turkish barbers then you must have something to hide, that you have these links to organised crime.
‘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.’
