The asylum cheaters

GREEDY asylum seekers are raking in a fortune by illegally letting out homes the Government gives them for free.

Not content with receiving a range of benefit handouts, they line their pockets with cash by sub-letting to other foreign workers and students. The scam makes millions of pounds a year - and costs the treasury hundreds of thousands in unpaid tax.

The racket is rife in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and in London, where firemen and nurses struggle to get on the housing ladder, our reporters found 17 council houses illegally for rent in one day.

The sub-letting scam is a new twist on an age-old housing benefit fraud called "ghosting".

The asylum seekers receive housing benefit to provide them and their families with a roof over their head. They then rent out the rooms on the private market - usually in shops and newsagents popular with students and migrant workers - and pocket the profit.

The window of one such newsagents in Ravenscourt Park, West London, is plastered with hundreds of classified ads for accommodation written on postcards.

Many are written in Eastern European languages and only give a mobile number alongside a short, cryptic message. Scores of people looking for somewhere to live gather in the street from early morning to late at night, busily phoning the numbers as they read them from the adverts.

It is a seller's market with desperate people competing to secure the rooms.

Posing as Polish students our investigators made contact with the would-be landlords and found three asylum seekers raking in nearly pounds 2,000 a month tax-free from the scam.

REFUGEE JERZY KACPEROWICZ

WHAT HE GETS FREE

pounds 2,025 a month: pounds 1,500 rent allowance, pounds 520 income support, family allowance and pounds 20 child clothes allowance

WHAT HE GETS FROM SCAM

pounds 720 a month tax free

WE were met at an immaculate four-bedroom mid-terrace house in Wood Green, North East London worth pounds 300,000, by Jerzy Kacperowicz, an asylum seeker who came to Britain five years ago claiming that his family were being persecuted in his native Poland.

He showed our reporters around the recently refurbished property, boasting: "It has a new kitchen and a nice garden. The rooms are good...clean. I want pounds 45 per week per room.

"But, if you rent the room, under no circumstances can you give this address to any officials.

"Especially the Home Office. No authorities. No one. I mean it, it's between you and me. Even if you want to make a phone call, you must go outside.

Shortly after arriving in Britain, he arranged for his wife, Martyma Majewska, and their three children to come too.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council - the authority responsible for their welfare pay their pounds 1,500-a-month rent to a private letting agent.

During their five-year stay in Britain, the family have never once paid for accommodation.

Astonishingly, Jerzy Kasperowicz - whose children ride brand new bikes - wants to claim more benefits to help with buying a car and the cost of bus and train fares and for furniture.

REFUGEE EWA HUCZKO

WHAT SHE GETS FREE

pounds 800 a month: pounds 438 income support plus extra child benefits, pounds 350 housing benefit, plus disability allowances

WHAT SHE GETS FROM SCAM

pounds 540 a month tax free

EWA Huczko and her husband Franciszek receive pounds 350-a-month housing benefit for their three-bedroom flat in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but they sub-let the bedrooms for pounds 45 each, raking in an extra pounds 540 a month.

Astonishingly, the Polish refugees even rent the rooms provided for the welfare of their severely disabled granddaughter and her father Wotciech.

During the viewing Ewa said: "It's pounds 45 per person. So it's pounds 90 for two, and there's another Polish girl. That includes bills and there's one week's deposit.

"You share the shower, kitchen and toilet. It's clean and there is a nice view from the windows."

Franciszek said: "The Social Services pay for the flat. They pay around pounds 350 per month to the agency who manage it. The Social Services also pay for nappies for my disabled granddaughter.

"She gets transport to and from her special school and she also got the wheelchair from them. She can't walk or speak and has some difficulties with her sight but her ears are very good.

"We receive council tax bills but we go to Social Services and they pay them for us.

"We came here in 1995 as refugees. We came to Earls Court. We had a translator who helped us to get benefit.

"We stayed at a hotel first and then we moved to a flat."

REFUGEE TOMASZ KWEIK

WHAT HE GETS FREE

pounds 750 a month: pounds 250 housing benefit plus income support and three lots of family allowance

WHAT HE GETS FROM SCAM

pounds 420 a month tax free

AS he showed our reporters around his three-bedroom flat, Polish refugee Tomasz Kwiek said: "It's not very high-level but it's cheap, pounds 35 per week per person.

"But you can't give the address to the Home Office or anyone connected to immigration things. It's impossible." In a veiled threat he added: "If you leave me in peace you will have no headaches in the future.

"It's one week's deposit and I'm looking for a long-term renter.""

Kriek, 29, has been claiming housing benefit since March 2000 and also receives Income Support and child benefit for his three children.

Home Office figures for the year 2000 show asylum seekers claimed pounds 56million in DSS benefits.

Taxpayers also funded the estimated pounds 575million cost of payments to local authorities for accommodation and food. That year the Government splashed out pounds 1,446million in overseas aid. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch, said the cost of asylum seekers to the British taxpayers was pounds 2,000million.

The huge sum is divided up into benefits, legal and administration costs of dealing with those wanting to settle in the country. It includes around pounds 170million in legal fees for dealing with asylum applications.

Mr Green said: "If you are going to spend pounds 2,000million then you are going to spend it much more effectively in Third World countries."

Copyright 2003 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.