Four members of a smuggling gang responsible for the "excruciatingly slow deaths" of 39 mainly Vietnamese migrants in the back of a lorry were sentenced to jail on Friday for up to 27 years.
Romanian Gheorghe Nica, 43, a senior figure in the gang, received the longest jail term for manslaughter and other charges with six other members of the group sentenced to between three and 20 years in prison at a hearing in London.
The migrants died inside an airtight container in October 2019 as they were brought to England from northern Europe in a highly-organised smuggling racket that had been operating for more than a decade.
The deaths shocked Britain and Vietnam and shone a spotlight on the illicit global trade that sends the poor of Asia, Africa and the Middle East on perilous journeys to the West.
Temperatures rose to 40°C in the container during the sea journey from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge to the UK as oxygen levels fell. The desperate migrants, aged from 15 to 44, stripped off their clothes in the rising heat, attempted to contact relatives on their mobile phones and tried unsuccessfully to break through the roof.
They were all dead by the time the container was picked up by a lorry driver from Purfleet, Essex, in south-east England. The court was told that a cloud of steam emerged from the back of the lorry when the driver opened the rear doors because of the heat generated during the trip.
The haulage company boss Ronan Hughes, 41, was sentenced to 20 years in jail while Maurice Robinson, 26, the driver who discovered the bodies, was sentenced to more than 13 years. Hughes was a veteran of the illicit trade who was jailed in 2009 after being caught trying to smuggle six million cigarettes.
The court was told that Hughes and Nica played senior roles in the gang but were not the kingpins of the operation that also included Vietnamese criminals. Four people were also sentenced to jail for up to seven years in Vietnam for helping to arrange people-trafficking journeys to Europe.
After their arrival from Asia, the smuggling gang had arranged for the migrants to be taken from safe houses in Paris and Dunkirk, France, and Brussels, Belgium, to an industrial estate in northern France.
There they were loaded into the back of the container and taken to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge by driver Eamonn Harrison, 24, who on Friday was sentenced to 18 years in jail.
The trailer was loaded on to a freighter and the migrants were due to be collected on the other side of the Channel and taken to safe houses in London until relatives paid up to £13,000 ($17,755) for the journey.
But they never made it beyond Purfleet. When Robinson came to pick them up the following morning he contacted the emergency services after discovering the bodies.
The gang was highly active and was involved in four operations, including the fatal one involving the 39 migrants, in a fortnight.
Mr Justice Sweeney said: "I have no doubt that… the conspiracy was a sophisticated, long-running and profitable one to smuggle mainly Vietnamese migrants across the channel."
How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
Profile of Tamatem
Date started: March 2013
Founder: Hussam Hammo
Based: Amman, Jordan
Employees: 55
Funding: $6m
Funders: Wamda Capital, Modern Electronics (part of Al Falaisah Group) and North Base Media
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The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
MATCH INFO
Hoffenheim v Liverpool
Uefa Champions League play-off, first leg
Location: Rhein-Neckar-Arena, Sinsheim
Kick-off: Tuesday, 10.45pm (UAE)
Evacuations to France hit by controversy
- Over 500 Gazans have been evacuated to France since November 2023
- Evacuations were paused after a student already in France posted anti-Semitic content and was subsequently expelled to Qatar
- The Foreign Ministry launched a review to determine how authorities failed to detect the posts before her entry
- Artists and researchers fall under a programme called Pause that began in 2017
- It has benefited more than 700 people from 44 countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Sudan
- Since the start of the Gaza war, it has also included 45 Gazan beneficiaries
- Unlike students, they are allowed to bring their families to France
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Company profile
Name: Dukkantek
Started: January 2021
Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani
Based: UAE
Number of employees: 140
Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service)
Investment: $5.2 million
Funding stage: Seed round
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office
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