The Reasons Our Team Went Undercover to Uncover Crime in the Kurdish Community

A pair of Kurdish men consented to work covertly to expose a operation behind unlawful commercial businesses because the wrongdoers are causing harm the reputation of Kurdish people in the Britain, they explain.

The pair, who we are calling Saman and Ali, are Kurdish-origin journalists who have both resided lawfully in the UK for years.

The team found that a Kurdish illegal enterprise was managing mini-marts, barbershops and vehicle cleaning services throughout Britain, and wanted to learn more about how it functioned and who was participating.

Armed with secret recording devices, Ali and Saman presented themselves as Kurdish-origin refugee applicants with no right to be employed, attempting to buy and run a small shop from which to trade contraband cigarettes and vapes.

The investigators were successful to uncover how simple it is for a person in these conditions to set up and run a commercial operation on the commercial area in plain sight. The individuals involved, we discovered, pay Kurds who have UK citizenship to register the operations in their names, assisting to mislead the government agencies.

Ali and Saman also managed to covertly document one of those at the centre of the operation, who claimed that he could eliminate government penalties of up to £60,000 encountered those using illegal employees.

"I aimed to contribute in exposing these illegal operations [...] to loudly proclaim that they do not speak for us," explains one reporter, a former refugee applicant personally. Saman entered the UK without authorization, having fled Kurdistan - a territory that spans the boundaries of multiple Middle Eastern countries but which is not internationally recognised as a country - because his life was at danger.

The reporters admit that disagreements over illegal immigration are high in the UK and say they have both been worried that the investigation could worsen hostilities.

But Ali explains that the unauthorized employment "damages the whole Kurdish-origin population" and he considers driven to "reveal it [the criminal network] out into public view".

Additionally, Ali mentions he was worried the reporting could be seized upon by the far-right.

He says this particularly struck him when he noticed that radical right campaigner Tommy Robinson's Unite the Kingdom protest was happening in the capital on one of the Saturdays and Sundays he was working covertly. Placards and flags could be observed at the rally, showing "we demand our nation back".

The reporters have both been observing online response to the investigation from inside the Kurdish-origin population and say it has sparked significant outrage for some. One social media comment they found read: "How can we locate and find [the undercover reporters] to attack them like dogs!"

A different called for their families in Kurdistan to be harmed.

They have also encountered claims that they were agents for the UK authorities, and traitors to other Kurdish people. "Both of us are not spies, and we have no aim of hurting the Kurdish-origin community," Saman says. "Our objective is to reveal those who have harmed its image. Both journalists are proud of our Kurdish-origin heritage and extremely troubled about the actions of such persons."

The majority of those applying for refugee status say they are fleeing politically motivated discrimination, according to an expert from the Refugee Workers Cultural Association, a organization that supports refugees and refugee applicants in the UK.

This was the situation for our covert journalist one investigator, who, when he initially came to the United Kingdom, faced difficulties for many years. He states he had to survive on less than £20 a per week while his refugee application was processed.

Refugee applicants now get approximately forty-nine pounds a per week - or £9.95 if they are in shelter which provides food, according to government regulations.

"Honestly saying, this is not adequate to maintain a respectable lifestyle," explains Mr Avicil from the RWCA.

Because refugee applicants are mostly restricted from working, he feels a significant number are open to being taken advantage of and are practically "forced to work in the black sector for as low as three pounds per hour".

A spokesperson for the authorities stated: "The government do not apologize for refusing to grant asylum seekers the authorization to work - granting this would generate an motivation for people to travel to the United Kingdom without authorization."

Asylum cases can require a long time to be decided with almost a third requiring over one year, according to official statistics from the end of March this year.

Saman explains being employed illegally in a car wash, barbershop or mini-mart would have been extremely simple to accomplish, but he informed us he would not have engaged in that.

Nonetheless, he says that those he interviewed laboring in illegal mini-marts during his research seemed "confused", especially those whose asylum claim has been rejected and who were in the appeal stage.

"They expended all their savings to migrate to the United Kingdom, they had their asylum rejected and now they've lost all they had."

Ali agrees that these individuals seemed desperate.

"When [they] declare you're not allowed to be employed - but additionally [you]