A UK grocery store owner has been extradited to Italy on charges of masterminding a £40million international cigarette smuggling network following an anti-mafia investigation.
Hasan Ferhat Baybasin, 34, was held as part of a huge police operation spanning five countries into a network allegedly flooding Britain with illegal tobacco.
Officers seized more than 40 tons of cigarettes worth around £40m along with assets worth over £2m. Baybasin, from Edgware, North London, was extradited to Italy last month after dropping his opposition to the move, the National Crime Agency said on Wednesday.
Court appearances and co-defendant
He had previously appeared at Westminster magistrates court alongside co-defendant Cagdas Duran, 37. The pair, both directors of the Target Food Store in Radford, Nottingham, had been remanded in custody to face extradition proceedings.
A judge in Genoa, Italy, ordered their pre-trial detention along with three other alleged gang members held in Italy and Poland.
Smuggling routes and methods
According to the European Public Prosecutor's Office, cigarette smugglers used a number of complex maritime routes to evade customs. Illicit cargo originated in Armenia, going through Dubai and on to Spain before entering Italy at Genoa.
Other routes passed through Georgia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Turkey. The suspects are said to have established a network of accomplices across the world, and the cigarettes were destined for the black market in the UK and other European nations.
They allegedly claimed they were shipping building materials and used containers with false bottoms to hide their illegal cargo. A corrupt IT specialist is said to have created and managed fake websites and emails as a front for the network while the plotters allegedly used encrypted phones to avoid law enforcement.
Family ties and gang background
Baybasin is understood to be a member of a notorious family that founded the Hackney Bombers organised crime gang in North East London. Huseyin Baybasin, 68, became known as "Europe's Pablo Escobar" when he masterminded the export of vast quantities of heroin while leading the network in the 1990s. He has been in custody in Holland since 1998 but has been cleared to begin a pathway leading to his release.
The group, known as Bombacilar in Turkish, has been locked in a bloody war with the rival Tottenham Turks gang which has resulted in at least a dozen murders.
Recent violence and extradition
A senior figure of the Bombers was the intended target of a shooting at a restaurant in Dalston, North East London, in May 2024 that left a nine-year-old girl with a bullet lodged in her head. Six weeks later, senior Turks member Izzet Eren, 41, was shot and killed in Chisinau, Moldova, in what is believed to be a tit-for-tat attack.
An NCA spokesperson said: "Hasan Ferhat Baybasin consented to extradition in early August and has been removed from the UK."
