Turkish hairdressing stores in the United Kingdom are attacked due to the ensure that buildings are used by crime gangs for money laundering, tax fraud and illegal migrating work.
The National Crime Agency (NCA), the FBI of Great -Britain, has started an investigation and has seen dozens of raids in the past month, leading tens of thousands of pounds in the process.
Officers of the NCA have joined forces with local police officers, immigration enforcement officials and HM income and customs vendors to perform the raids in villages and towns in Great Britain.
It is suspected that many of the hairdressing stores are used as a front to wash drug money white or to work on illegal migrants.
In some salons, tax inspectors reportedly looked at the number of seats in a salon in use to work out if the profits indicated by the company matched the number of customers.
One official told The Sunday Times that some streets have several hairdressers who all explain large recordings, even though they are empty for most days.
According to Retail Analytics Company Green Street, more than 750 hairdressing stores were opened in the UK last year.
Since 2018, the number has increased by more than 15 percent to more than 18,000.
A street with three separate hairdressers in Foleshill, Coventry. There is no suggestion that these stores are involved in misconduct
Hewa Rahimpur, 30, and his gang colleague Iranian Kurds were held on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants in Dover from the French coast in small boats
Many of the stores that work as Turkish hairdressers are run by Albanians or Kurds with links to people smuggling or drugs.
Traditional Hairdressers in Turkish style are known for stylish hairstyles, usually complete with a hot towel and murderous razor.
Now many are investigated by the NCA, using a combination of raids in addition to friendly visits to buildings to try to get more information.
A spokesperson for the NCA said: 'Intelligence that connects the use of hairdressing stores, as well as other money -intensive companies, has risen in the laundering of money and other crime in recent years.
'To respond to this threat, the NCA Multi-agency has a focused on hairdressing shops where suspicious activity has been identified and where possible connections with organized crime are.
“This has a large number of police services throughout England and Wales, as well as other partners, including HMRC and the immigration enforcement department of the home office.”
In the UK, hairdressers do not have to register as a company with Companies House, because they can choose to work as a sole trader. They can then leave individual seats to hairdressers.
The recent explosion in Turkish hairdressing shops along British main streets has fueled widespread suspicions of organized criminal activities, since the number has increased by 50 percent in the past six years to around 19,000.
Resident of Ilford Hewa Rahimpur is held in East London. He was later extradited to Belgium, where he ended up
It was the arrest of the lynchpin of a huge channel mixing ring in 2022 that brought the activities of some of the more dubious hairdressing shops to the attention of the NCA for the first time.
Hewa Rahimpur, 30, and his gang colleague Iranian Kurds were held on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants in Dover from the French coast on small boats.
Rahimpur, who had arrived illegally in the UK and received asylum after having claimed 'political oppression' in his home country, rode a top-of-the-range Mercedes when he was caught by the police.
His gang had yielded £ 13 million in cash of the crossing and it had to be washed somehow, so Rahimpur, a former hairdresser, entered the hair styling company in Camden, North Londs a few years ago.
He was extradited from the UK to end up in Belgium last year and is now a prison sentence of 11 years for human trafficking.
However, the suspicions around Turkish hairdressers have led many in the profession of their reputation that is being affected.
In a second controversial test, the 33-year-old Albanian Gul Wali Jabarkhel was accused of using his hairdressing store in Colindale, North London, as the basis for a smuggling racket in which he tried to recruit truck drivers to bring migrants to the VK in their load.
After he realized that the police were watching him, Jabarkhel fled to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2020. Only when he tried to return to the United Kingdom a year later by hiring one of the same truck drivers he had used to smuggle in migrants, were two of his employees caught £ 7,500 for the deal at the London Gateway Services on the M1 and arrested for money-laundering affairs.
Albanian Gul Wali Jabarkhel, 33, was accused of using his hairdresser's shop in Colindale, North Londs, as the basis for a smuggling racket
Tarek Namouz, owner of Boss Crew Barbers, was sentenced last year to 12 years to send £ 11,000 to Syria to “buy weapons and explosives” to use against President Assad's government
Both claimed that it was money to buy hairdressing equipment, but the authorities had followed their cell phones and SMS messages and knew that this was incorrect.
Jabarkhel was convicted with 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 people were little more than goods to take advantage'.
There are also money wax salons linked to terrorism. West -London Snipper Tarek Namouz, owner of Boss Crew Barbers, was sentenced to 12 years to send £ 11,000 to Syria last year to “buy weapons and explosives” to use against President Assad's government.
The hairdresser, who lived above his salon in Hammersmith, lived on a prison visitor while waiting for the trial he had actually managed to get £ 25,000 for the supporters of the Islamic State he financed.
Last year, Reeza Jafari told MailOnline that he has had enough of those who have suspicions about the mass rise in Turkish hairdressers.
The 31-year-old walks Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, but his family is originally from Uzbekistan and he has been living in the UK for 16 years now.
He said: 'People assume that if you own a Turkish hairdressers, you must have something to hide, you have these links to organized crime.
'But in most cases it is not true. We just want to earn money and have a livelihood like someone else.
Reza Jafari, owns a Turkish hairdresser's shop and has become fed up with allegations of crime
Reza Jafari, 31, who runs Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, knows, has had enough of those who have suspicions about the mass rise in Turkish hairdressers
'But the small number of bad damage to the good. Those who only exist to launder cash for criminals, we all reflect badly because we are viewed in the same way. '
Speaking in 2023, the former Metropolitan Police Officer Ali Hassan Ali said: 'About the streets we saw a tree in hairdressers that have been opening since the pandemic. Many of these stores have thousands of pound equipment but no customers.
'Although the stores will in some cases be involved in legitimate matters, there is a strong reason from my own experience to believe that a large number, in particular the ownership of Albanians, Turks and Kurds, have ties with organized crime.
“This can be people smuggling and in some cases drugs.”
