EXCLUSIVE Incredible rise of people smuggling kingpin 'The Scorpion': How he went from being smuggled into Dover on a lorry to a life of fast cars, female admirers and piles of cash in Nottingham...
before finally being snared at his luxury mansion By Sue Mitchell Published: 07:23 EDT, 21 May 2024 | Updated: 08:17 EDT, 21 May 2024 e-mail 29 View comments Clad in a Ralph Lauren shirt, layered with an expensive gilet, with gleaming white teeth and highly manicured nails, the man sitting in front of me looked like an affluent businessman: well groomed, good looking, the epitome of respectability. What he was about to admit, however, in the nondescript cafe we'd agreed to meet in, belied his smooth appearance. For while sipping a strong coffee, and with an insouciance that was utterly chilling, he began to explain that he had personally masterminded the smuggling of tens of thousands of migrants into Europe.
More than this, he casually confessed to being one of just two main smugglers heading operations across Belgium and France between 2016 and 2019. Friends said Barzan Majeed, seen with his three of his brothers, 'wanted to be a trillionaire' He even claimed, without a hint of repentance in his voice, that some '95 to 99 per cent' of illegal crossings to the UK since 2016 – and one must thus surely conclude, all those tragic drownings of men, women and children in the Channel – could be linked to him. For the man I was meeting was Barzan Majeed, better known as smuggling ki.
