Albanian drug dealer pictured with £250k in cash can stay in Britain

Telegraph

a day ago

A jailed Albanian drug dealer who took pictures of himself surrounded by £250,000 in cash has been allowed to remain in the UK.
The Home Office and National Crime Agency (NCA) are seeking to deport Olsi Beheluli, 33, who was jailed for 11 years for his 'senior role' in a heroin drug dealing ring.
They say that Beheluli, who came to the UK as a nine year old, fraudulently secured British citizenship after claiming that he was not involved in criminality on his application form for naturalisation.
Only eight months later, he was arrested with eight kilograms of high purity heroin, which had an estimated street value of £200,000, on his way to a 'stash house' in Neasden, where counterfeit identity documents and scales were found.
The National Crime Agency found a picture of him surrounded by £250,000 in cash on his iPhone after raids in north-west London in 2015.
He was found guilty of conspiring to supply class A drugs at Blackfriars Crown Court and sentenced to 11 years in prison on April 1, 2015.
Home Office's 'common sense' argument
The Home Office and NCA argued that only a senior person with a longstanding criminal history would be entrusted with such a high value consignment of drugs.
A lower tier tribunal judge then rejected that argument on the basis that there was no surveillance or witness evidence to support it. Beheluli's appeal against his deportation was upheld.
However, the Home Office appealed the case and secured a re-hearing after an upper tribunal judge ruled that the lack of evidence to prove his prior criminality was not enough to outweigh the 'common sense' arguments of the Home Secretary.
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example uncovered by The Telegraph where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have been able to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
Ministers are proposing to raise the threshold to make it harder for judges to grant the right to remain based on article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to a family life, and article 3, which protects against torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Beheluli's father claimed asylum after the family arrived in the UK on November 22, 2000. His applications were rejected but in 2006 they were granted discretionary leave to remain, which then 'confusingly, almost simultaneously' became indefinite leave to remain, the tribunal was told. There is nothing to suggest Beheluli's father was involved in any wrongdoing.
Eight years later, in April 2014, Beheluli was granted British citizenship. But eight months after that, on October 7, 2014, he was caught with £200,000 worth of heroin and arrested for drug offences.
The Home Office sought to deport him on the basis that he had defrauded officials when he claimed in his citizenship application that there was nothing 'which reflected adversely on his character'.
Officials argued that the value of the drugs meant he 'must have established a fairly senior role in the supply of heroin, since he was entrusted with more than eight kilograms of high-purity heroin with a street value of more than £200,000'.
'Beyond logic'
The Home Office said it was 'incredible' to accept that he was new to the drug trade and that his arrest represented the first time he had engaged in such activities.
The court was told: 'It is beyond logic to accept that [he] would be trusted with such a consignment of drugs if [he was] not already involved in the supply of Class A Drugs.'
However, the lower tier tribunal ruled that there was insufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.
The tribunal ruled: 'There is, for example, no surveillance or other evidence from the NCA and there is no opinion evidence from a police officer, for example, to support the suggestion that only a senior and trusted member of an organised criminal gang would be entrusted with such a quantity of drugs.
'There was no evidence of sufficient cogency to establish that the appellant had been involved in criminality at the time that he said that there was nothing adverse to declare about his character.'
But the upper tribunal rejected these arguments and ordered a re-hearing. It ruled that the lack of physical evidence did not 'amount to a complete and incontrovertible answer to the common-sense point made by the Secretary of State.'
It concluded: 'Whether or not there was a statement from a police officer, and whether or not there was further evidence from the NCA, that view was deserving of respect and was capable of supporting the common-sense stance of the Secretary of State.'