Hundreds of foreign criminals convicted of murder, rape and child sexual abuse have been allowed into Britain from abroad, police figures show.
The violent foreign offenders are exploiting “weaknesses” in the UK visa system that enable them to enter the country despite post-Brexit rules that allow the Government to ban any overseas criminals jailed for more than a year.
They only have to self-declare that they have not committed any serious crime to secure a visa to enter the UK – and are only exposed if they get into trouble with police once in Britain.
UK police officers and law enforcement agencies can then check an arrested foreign suspect’s criminal background through the UK’s ACRO criminal records office which applies for the information from officials in the person’s home country.
Data from ACRO, released under freedom of information (FOI) laws, shows checks with officials in Romania have turned up more than 700 cases in the last three years where a suspect in the UK has a criminal record there for a murder or manslaughter, rape or a child sex offence.
The FOI request revealed that in the last three years officials working at ACRO have carried out 317,757 cross-border computerised criminal record checks on arrested foreign nationals.
Based on a sample of just five nationalities, these checks uncovered details of 524 cases where a suspect had a conviction abroad for murder or manslaughter, 441 cases of a person with an overseas rape conviction and 592 incidents of child sex offences abroad.
One of the most high-profile cases saw Michael Podlaszczyk, 33, come to the UK despite having served 12 years in jail for killing a man in a drunken rage in his native Poland. His conviction only emerged after he was jailed for life for raping and robbing a woman whom he attacked in a park in Leicester.
Another high-profile case was that of Vytautas Jokubauskas, 59, who murdered his partner before dismembering her and stuffing her torso into a suitcase. Jokubauskas, who was living in Peterborough, strangled his girlfriend Ramute Butkiene, 42, with a dressing gown cord before dismembering her body.
It emerged at the end of his trial, where he was convicted of her murder, that in 1992 he was jailed in Lithuania for a brawl in which he killed a man.
The issue was further highlighted in 2015 when Lithuanian Raimondas Jakstas, 26, was jailed for attacking his neighbour in Boston, Lincolnshire. Jakstas had come to the UK after his release from a Lithuanian jail where he had served five years of a nine-year sentence for beating someone to death.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the Government should consider whether the introduction of a US-style electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system for travellers to the UK next year could provide an opportunity to set up a new criminal background checks system. “I would support it,” he said.
In the meantime, he said: “It is vital where foreign nationals are found to have committed serious offences here or elsewhere that they are rapidly returned to their country of origin. We can’t have known foreign criminals roaming our streets.”
Under ETA, travellers to the UK will have to submit biographic, biometric and contact details and answer questions about their plans before being automatically checked against watchlists and criminal databases.
However, even ETA still only requires self-declaration on criminality and checks are only against UK databases and Interpol watchlists for terrorists and other serious international criminals. Officers would need prior suspicions about a traveller to check their criminal background through ACRO before their arrival.
A former senior Border Force and immigration officer told The Sunday Telegraph: “It is a weakness in the current system but it’s difficult because individual countries’ criminal records databases are not networked. Even if they were to be, it raises quite a big privacy issue.”
It is understood that officials considered tougher visa requirements when the post-Brexit rules on criminal convictions were introduced. This included the possibility of requiring travellers to the UK to get a police certificate confirming they had no criminal record before getting a visa.
“It’s tricky because it would bring the visa system to a grinding halt in places like India and Pakistan because it would take so long to furnish those certificates. And then there would be forgeries,” said the former officer.
Among those who have been banned from the UK are well-known people with convictions such as boxer Mike Tyson, who was barred due to his conviction for rape, and rapper Snoop Dogg for a previous case of violent disorder.
Most prolific countries
The ACRO data obtained by The Telegraph shows the top three nations for murder or manslaughter in the past three years were Romania (307 cases), Lithuania (93) and Poland (83). For rape, it was Romania (235), Poland (121) and Lithuania (41). For child sex offences, it was Romania (216), Poland (203) and the Czech Republic (77).
A Home Office spokesman said: “Those applying for a visa to come to the UK are required to declare any criminal convictions and are subject to checks against UK police databases, watchlists and immigration databases. They may be refused if they have a criminal conviction, a history of serious or persistent offending or have failed to declare convictions.
“Our police also carry out routine checks for overseas criminal convictions on foreign nationals who are arrested, and where serious convictions are found, individuals are referred to Immigration Enforcement for deportation consideration.”
A spokesman for ACRO said: “The UK has well-established mechanisms for exchanging information on criminal records with other countries. This helps UK police pursue criminal investigations and safeguard communities.”
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