A manager at the store has branded reports of the arrests as ‘fake news’
The owner of the Target Food Store in Alfreton Road, Radford, was arrested by anti-mafia police(Image: Joseph Raynor/Reach PLC)
Businesses and residents in the shadow of a Nottingham supermarket have described their shock after the store’s owner was arrested on suspicion of masterminding a £40 million international cigarette smuggling network.
Hasan Ferhat Baybasin, a director of the Target Food Store on Alfreton Road, in Radford, was held as part of a huge operation which spanned five countries, led by the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate (DIA) in Italy.
Officers unearthed more than 40 tonnes of illegal cigarettes worth around £40 million, along with assets worth over £2 million, as part of the investigation.
The store’s owner, Hasan Ferhat Baybasin, 34, from Edgware, North London, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ court last Thursday (April 2) alongside co-defendant Cagdas Duran, 37.
The defendants, who are both directors of the Target Food Store, were remanded in custody to face extradition proceedings.
The 24-hour international supermarket is one of many shops on the busy and sprawling Alfreton Road which stretches from the edge of the city centre through Radford and to Hyson Green.
Workers at several shops on the street claimed the news of the arrests had come as a surprise, with some appearing visibly shocked when Nottinghamshire Live visited.
“I’ve been in the shop before and it was always really clean and the staff were friendly. You’d never imagine this would [allegedly] happen,” said Harjinder Kaur, the owner of the World of Drinks store.
“This is a nice, little peaceful area with lots of students and we’ve never seen anything like this. Further down towards Hyson Green, it’s not as nice, but here everyone is friendly.”
Brodie Males, the owner of the Inkland Tattoo shop on nearby Canning Circus said she “couldn’t believe” the reports of the incident.
“You’d have no idea something like [what is alleged] was going on just down the road and it seems like it’s out of a movie or a TV show,” the 18-year-old added.
Hasan Ferhat Baybasin (left) and Cagdas Duran appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ court on Thursday (March 2)(Image: Europol)
A judge in Genoa, Italy, ordered the pre-trial detention of Baybasin and Duran, along with three other alleged gang members held in Italy and Poland.
According to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the cigarette smugglers used a number of complex maritime routes to evade customs, with cargo originating in Armenia before going through Dubai and then Spain, eventually entering Italy.
Other routes passed through Georgia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Turkey, with a network of accomplices established across the world, and the cigarettes were, allegedly, eventually destined for the black market in the UK and other European nations.
When Nottinghamshire Live visited the Target Food Store, a manager branded reports of the arrests as “fake news” and claimed the store would remain open as usual.
Jay, who owns CJANZ Barbers, also on Canning Circus, added: “It’s shocking, to be honest. It’s really not good for the area.”
The cigarette smugglers allegedly claimed they were shipping building materials and are said to have used containers with false bottoms to hide their illegal cargo, with a corrupt IT specialist accused of creating fake websites as a front for the network.
The 24-hour supermarket stocks food from across the world(Image: Joseph Raynor/Reach PLC)
The market value of the seized goods in Italy is estimated at around £15 million, a figure that could have tripled had they reached the UK.
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.
A leading 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.
The Bombers, or Bombacilar as they are known in Turkish, acquired a fearsome reputation when it was run by Huseyin Baybasin and two brothers, known as “The Family”.
