He boasted that he was the ‘King of Transport’, but some of his passengers didn’t survive the journey.

Adem Savas was named as Britain’s most wanted man after becoming the biggest supplier of small boats for migrant crossings in the English Channel.

The 45-year-old from Turkey made millions supplying thousands of rubber boats, feeble engines and flimsy lifejackets to criminal gangs, with his shoddy equipment said to be responsible for scores of deaths.

The boat tycoon was so prolific that the National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that he supplied around half of the boats and engines in all migrant Channel crossings.

Now the smuggling lynchpin has been jailed for 11 years after being convicted today of aggravated human smuggling.

A court in Belgium heard how Savas was involved in people smuggling for a decade, supplying countless criminal gangs with cheap boats and engines he sourced from China.

He became the main importer of ‘Parsun’ outboard engines, the type most frequently used by gangs operating small boats in the Channel.

Flogging flimsy boats and underpowered engines for £4,000 on average, investigators believe he made millions from the trade, with Belgium prosecutors tracing at least $1.7million worth of assets including property, farmland, and luxury cars in Istanbul where he ran his operation.

Savas managed to stay undetected for years by bribing corrupt Turkish police officers paying for them to go on luxury holidays, the court heard.

Adem Savas made millions supplying boats to criminal gangs 

It was only when the NCA took down a major Europe-wide smuggling ring thought to be behind the movement of more than 10,000 migrants in small boat crossings that they identified the supplier.

Police uncovered messages between Savas and the head of the smuggling network Hewa Rahimpur, about deaths in the channel after boats sank.

In other messages with Rahimpur, who was later jailed for 13 years for leading a people smuggling gang, they discussed the UK Government’s policy on migrants.

Savas boasted about supplying 1,000 outboard motors for the European refugee market, calling himself ‘the King of Transport and Export’.

Investigators discovered that his boats were moved overland from Turkey into Bulgaria, and then across Europe to Germany where they would be stored before being used in the Channel.

Savas used a Netherlands haulage firm connected with drug trafficking to transport the boats to people smuggling networks in Belgium and France between 2019 and 2024.