Photo credit: ITVX
Two men who attempted to smuggle ten Vietnamese people into the UK have been jailed.
Viet Nam News reports that Eoin Nolan and Daniel Loughran were part of a people-smuggling gang who conspired to move ten migrants, including eight children, from Belgium to the UK on March 5, 2020.
The gang are believed to have charged each migrant around US$20,000 for the crossing where they would be hidden in a dummy load in the back of a lorry until arrival in the UK.
Both were arrested after a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation and convicted of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration following a five-week trial at Maidstone Crown Court on February 6. They were sentenced at the same court on Thursday.
Loughran was sentenced to five years and six months while Nolan was sentenced to four years in prison.
Nolan spent hours attempting to source a driver for the smuggling attempt and eventually arranged for Duncan McLaughlin to travel from Scotland to Kent and then to France.
There, he met the migrants at a predetermined rendezvous point and they were given instructions to hide in an unsteady load of used tyres before being driven France to Zeebrugge in Belgium where they would have been loaded onto a ferry destined for Purfleet, England.
But the Belgian authorities, working with the NCA, tracked the lorry and intercepted the trailer at a parking area in Gentbrugge before the smuggling could continue to the UK.
The migrants had already paid $200,000 to make the crossing. The money was never recovered.
NCA investigation found that Loughran had been working closely with Wayne Sherlock who lived in Dover, Kent. The pair arranged for an HGV tractor unit to be driven from Armagh to Dublin, before boarding a ferry to Holyhead and onwards to Kent the day before the smuggling took place.
Sherlock previously pleaded guilty for his role in the conspiracy in June 2020 and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
McLaughlin was in close contact with Nolan throughout the trip to ensure the migrants were collected on time.
