Let's say that a random person, in a random city in the United Kingdom, has the day more or less free and at ten in the morning he takes his car (which he hasn't cleaned for months) to a car wash. Then, since he is going on vacation to Spain and so that his whitish skin doesn't sing too much, he hires a session of UVA rays. On the same street, he exchanges pounds for euros in one of those beach bars that advertises money exchange, since banks now have no windows and do not serve customers in person. After eating something, he buys some trinkets, gets a manicure in a place where all the employees are oriental, and then, for that matter, he gets a haircut at the Turkish barbershop on the corner.
All, apparently, perfectly innocent. But in reality, that individual may have been an unwitting accessory to numerous criminal activities during his journey, since all of the types of establishments mentioned are classic places of money laundering, drug trafficking, and modern day slavery.
The latest fashion, according to a report by the Scotland Yard unit dedicated to the fight against fraud and the prosecution of organized crime, are barbershops. Throughout the country there are 46,000 registered, almost all with less than five employees, and practically all of those that closed during the pandemic have reopened. In general they are worn by Turks, Kurds and Albanians. And although the vast majority are legitimate businesses whose owners are trying to save what they can in taxes anyway (like almost all sons of neighbors), the police have warned to be careful with those that only accept cash, they are usually empty with the hairdressers and hairdressers with their arms crossed and have very expensive facilities and material for very few clients.
It is not only about laundering money, recycling the money generated through criminal activities and thus giving it legitimacy to be invested in whatever (the profit is much higher than the cost of rent, electricity and what the employees of the barbershop). Kurdish, Albanian and Turkish mafias are responsible for a large part of the trafficking of illegal immigrants through the English Channel (46,000 crossed by boat last year), and the authorities think that behind a simple haircut for fifteen euros sometimes hides a complex operation of modern slavery, human trafficking and prostitution.
Domestic workers and brothels are full of women who are stripped of their documentation, intimidated, taken advantage of by traffickers, take advantage of their vulnerability, make it difficult for them to learn the language and make them feel totally isolated. And the same goes for men in the agricultural, construction, and food processing sectors. Victims are frequently transferred from one city to another so that they do not meet anyone or establish a familiarity. It is not, of course, a phenomenon unique to Great Britain. But in Great Britain part of the criminal chain is made up of car washes, nail salons, sunbathing establishments and barbershops.
The value in the United Kingdom of a modern slave is between one thousand and ten thousand euros. According to tax data, a sex worker generates up to sixty thousand euros a year in income, of which she can keep very little. The traffickers, in addition to boats, bring the men and women on cheap airlines that fly to small airports with little security. And from there they control them, make them pick strawberries and asparagus, work in slaughterhouses, serve wealthy families with few scruples who do not want to pay social security or need the person to speak the language, cut their hair or do a manicure, always under the strict supervision of a “supervisor”. If they try to escape they will have nowhere to live, and if they go to the police they will be deported to their countries or placed in a refugee center, and that is not what they have come for. In 2019, 39 Vietnamese suffocated to death in the cargo compartment of a truck that had made the journey from Belgium to Essex. The driver did not put the air.
But if barbershops can be a center of criminal activity, to clean up real money, there is nothing like a bank, cryptocurrencies and financial products. Two hundred billion euros are treated with detergent every year in London. One can leave the hairdresser very handsome, but also the tickets after being put through the washing machine.
