Authorities have apprehended the proprietor of a Nottingham grocery store over suspicions of orchestrating a £40 million illicit international cigarette trafficking network. Hasan Ferhat Baybasin, 34, was arrested in connection with a large-scale operation across five countries led by the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate (DIA) in Italy. During the operation, law enforcement officers confiscated more than 40 tonnes of illegal cigarettes valued at around £40 million, in addition to seizing assets exceeding £2 million.
Baybasin, a resident of Edgware, north London, made a court appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ court alongside co-defendant Cagdas Duran, 37. Both individuals, who serve as directors of the Target Food Store on Alfreton Road in Radford, Nottingham, were detained pending extradition proceedings.
A judge in Genoa, Italy, ordered the pre-trial detention of Baybasin and Duran, along with three other alleged accomplices detained in Italy and Poland. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the cigarette smugglers utilized intricate maritime routes to elude customs authorities.
The contraband originated in Armenia, transited through Dubai and Spain before reaching Italy at the port of Genoa. The smuggling network also utilized alternative routes passing through Georgia, Kenya, the Netherlands, and Turkey in an attempt to obfuscate the true source of the illicit products.
The criminal organization had established a global network of collaborators, with the smuggled cigarettes destined for the black market in the UK and various other European countries.
Reportedly, the traffickers disguised the shipments as building materials, employing containers with false bottoms to conceal the unlawful cargo. Allegedly, a corrupt IT specialist managed fake websites and emails to mask the network’s activities, while the perpetrators communicated through sophisticated encrypted phones to evade law enforcement detection.
The estimated market worth of the confiscated goods in Italy is approximately £15 million, a value that could have tripled upon reaching the UK. Baybasin is believed to be associated with a notorious family that founded the Hackney Bombers organized crime gang in northeast London.
Huseyin Baybasin, 68, gained notoriety as “Europe’s Pablo Escobar” for overseeing the large-scale heroin exportation orchestrated by the network during the 1990s. The group has been embroiled in a violent feud with the rival Tottenham Turks gang, resulting in numerous fatalities.
A prominent figure linked to the Bombers was targeted in a shooting at a restaurant in Dalston, North East London, in May 2024, leading to a nine-year-old girl sustaining a gunshot wound to the head.
Shortly thereafter, Izzet Eren, a senior member of the Tottenham Turks, was fatally shot outside a cafe in Chisinau, Moldova, in what is suspected to be a retaliatory attack.
The Bombers, known as Bombacilar in Turkish, garnered a fearsome reputation under the leadership of Huseyin Baybasin and his two brothers, referred to as “The Family.”
Huseyin was arrested in the Netherlands in 1998 and is currently undergoing rehabilitation under the Advisory Board for Long-Term Sentences in preparation for his reintegration into society. His brother Abdullah, 64, who was left disabled after a gunshot incident in the 1980s, arrived in the UK via Gibraltar in 1997.
The third brother, Mehmet, 60, collaborated with Liverpool gangs to import substantial quantities of cocaine from Latin America. Mehmet, residing in Edgware, Middlesex, frequently traveled to South America for meetings with representatives of Colombian and Venezuelan cartels.
Mehmet is presently serving a 30-year sentence in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire, following his conviction in Liverpool in 2011 for attempting to smuggle 40 tonnes of cocaine into the country.
Abdullah’s son, Cagdas Baybasin, was the victim of multiple gunshot wounds in Düsseldorf, Germany, in January. Abdullah himself was sentenced to 22 years in a London prison in 2006 for heroin distribution before being deported.
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