The Reasons Our Team Chose to Go Covert to Expose Criminal Activity in the Kurdish Population

Two Kurdish-background men agreed to go undercover to reveal a network behind illegal High Street establishments because the wrongdoers are causing harm the standing of Kurdish people in the UK, they state.

The pair, who we are referring to as Ali and Saman, are Kurdish journalists who have both resided legally in the United Kingdom for years.

The team found that a Kurdish-linked criminal operation was running small shops, hair salons and car washes throughout the United Kingdom, and wanted to discover more about how it operated and who was participating.

Armed with secret recording devices, Saman and Ali posed as Kurdish refugee applicants with no permission to work, seeking to purchase and operate a mini-mart from which to sell contraband cigarettes and electronic cigarettes.

The investigators were able to reveal how easy it is for a person in these conditions to set up and manage a business on the High Street in plain sight. Those involved, we learned, pay Kurds who have British citizenship to legally establish the operations in their identities, helping to deceive the authorities.

Saman and Ali also were able to covertly document one of those at the core of the network, who asserted that he could remove government penalties of up to £60k encountered those hiring illegal laborers.

"I sought to participate in uncovering these illegal activities [...] to loudly proclaim that they do not speak for our community," states one reporter, a former asylum seeker personally. The reporter entered the United Kingdom illegally, having fled Kurdistan - a region that spans the boundaries of Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria but which is not globally acknowledged as a state - because his life was at danger.

The reporters acknowledge that disagreements over illegal immigration are significant in the UK and state they have both been anxious that the probe could worsen tensions.

But the other reporter explains that the illegal labor "harms the whole Kurdish population" and he feels driven to "expose it [the criminal network] out into the open".

Furthermore, the journalist says he was concerned the publication could be seized upon by the radical right.

He says this notably affected him when he noticed that radical right campaigner a prominent activist's Unite the Kingdom protest was occurring in the capital on one of the weekends he was operating secretly. Placards and banners could be observed at the protest, showing "we want our nation returned".

The reporters have both been observing social media feedback to the exposé from within the Kurdish-origin population and say it has caused strong anger for some. One social media post they spotted said: "How can we locate and track [the undercover reporters] to attack them like dogs!"

A different called for their families in the Kurdish region to be harmed.

They have also seen claims that they were informants for the British government, and traitors to other Kurdish people. "We are not spies, and we have no desire of harming the Kurdish-origin community," one reporter explains. "Our goal is to reveal those who have compromised its image. Both journalists are honored of our Kurdish heritage and extremely worried about the activities of such people."

The majority of those applying for asylum claim they are fleeing political persecution, according to Ibrahim Avicil from the a charitable organization, a charity that assists asylum seekers and refugee applicants in the United Kingdom.

This was the situation for our undercover journalist Saman, who, when he first came to the UK, struggled for many years. He explains he had to survive on under £20 a week while his asylum claim was considered.

Asylum seekers now receive about forty-nine pounds a week - or £9.95 if they are in housing which includes food, according to government regulations.

"Practically stating, this isn't sufficient to support a respectable existence," says Mr Avicil from the RWCA.

Because asylum seekers are mostly prevented from working, he feels numerous are susceptible to being exploited and are effectively "obligated to work in the illegal sector for as low as £3 per hourly rate".

A official for the government department said: "The government do not apologize for refusing to grant asylum seekers the permission to be employed - doing so would create an reason for people to migrate to the UK without authorization."

Refugee cases can take multiple years to be processed with approximately a one-third taking more than 12 months, according to government statistics from the end of March this current year.

Saman says working without authorization in a vehicle cleaning service, barbershop or convenience store would have been very straightforward to accomplish, but he explained to the team he would not have engaged in that.

Nonetheless, he states that those he met laboring in unauthorized mini-marts during his research seemed "disoriented", especially those whose asylum claim has been rejected and who were in the appeal stage.

"They used their entire funds to migrate to the United Kingdom, they had their asylum refused and now they've sacrificed everything."

Ali agrees that these individuals seemed hopeless.

"If [they] say you're not allowed to be employed - but additionally [you]