EXCLUSIVE The migrant 'hotel kings' paid up to £700m a year in taxpayers' cash: Kebab shop owner and property tycoon ran firm housing asylum seekers in 'four-star holiday resorts'

Daily Mail​

29-04-2025

These are the 'migrant king' hospitality bosses paid up to £700million a year of taxpayer cash to run 'four-star' asylum hotels - from which they paid out over £45million in dividends to shareholders, including themselves, over 12 months.
Safwan Adam and Bassam Gilini have cashed in on the migrant crisis via firm Stay Belvedere Hotels Limited (SBHL), which has been stripped of its Home Office contract after the Government expressed concerns over its performance.
MailOnline can reveal that the pair, who are directors of the firm, paid £45m of dividends to five shareholders in the same year that they reported almost £705million of income - almost all of it thought to be from its Government deal to house migrants.
They each hold 17.5 per cent of the firm via holding companies, according to official filings - meaning they were in line for at least £7.8million each.
And between February 2020 and December 2022, the firm reported a staggering £75.7million of pre-tax profits against a total turnover of £888.2million - from which they paid also out a £2.5million bonus worth £430,000 apiece.
This comes despite the firm being accused of failing to meet financial commitments to the hotels it is using for asylum accommodation, and after being accused of paying workers less than minimum wage.
Both directors appear to have little experience in managing immigration accommodation prior to being appointed to the firm in April 2021.
Adam has a degree in aeronautical engineering, runs his own investment firm and a franchise of CeX second-hand electronics shops, and is also a shareholder in a franchise of homecare providers.
He was also, for a time, involved in a German Doner Kebab franchise, according to his LinkedIn profile - which fails to mention his dealings in asylum hotels - and worked for Madame Tussauds.
Gilini, meanwhile, boasts that he is a 'visionary' property developer on his website, having previously run pop-up fireworks shops and a sushi restaurant in east London.
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Adam is also a donor to the Liberal Democrats, giving Sir Ed Davey's party over £760,000 last year, of which nearly £500,000 was handed over in the run up to last year's general election via his investment firm.
Neither are named on the SBHL website, which instead features free stock photographs next to a boast that the company was a 'leading provider... of temporary accommodation for those seeking asylum in the UK.'
Company records show their business interests outside of asylum hotels - from investment companies to property firms - are worth millions.
SBHL was subcontracted to manage asylum seeker hotels by accomodation firm Clearsprings, which is being paid around £2bn a year by the Home Office in a deal agreed under the previous government in 2019 but has been criticised over the state of its hotels.
For a time, it employed the former MP Crispin Blunt as a member of its 'oversight board', for which he was paid £15,000 a year for 128 hours of work.
But the Home Office said it was dropping SBHL last month. It has not outlined its reasons for doing so, other than to say it had concerns about its 'performance and behaviour as a government supplier'.
Its wider contract with Clearsprings must remain in place until at least September 2026, the earliest point at which it can exit the deal without any penalty for breaking the deal early; it is due to end in 2029.
However, asylum minister Angela Eagle said that the action had been taken after the Home Office improved its 'oversight' of firms operating asylum hotels - and deemed SBHL unsuitable to look after asylum seekers.
'We have made the decision to remove Stay Belvedere Hotels from the Home Office supply chain and will not hesitate to take further action to ensure Home Office contracts deliver for the UK,' she said.
The contract for managing SBHL's hotels is being transferred to Mears, Serco and Corporate Travel Management (CTM), the later of which was criticised for its running of the Bibby Stockholm barge.
The duo do not appear on SBHL's website - instead, it is decorated with stock images which boast that the firm is a 'leading provider' of asylum accomodation
Between April 2021 and September 2021, Adam and Gilini authorised £2.5million in dividends after the firm reported a pre-tax profit of £8.4million against an income of £104.8million, according to accounts filed with Companies House.
And in the year to September 2022, when the company reported a pre-tax profit of £62.5million against income of £704.6million, they signed off on an even healthier bonus of £44.92million.
During this time, they were reported to have paid their staff below the minimum wage - paying workers, many of them foreign nationals, as little as £5.60 an hour, below what was then the minimum wage of £8.70.
'It's exhausting, illegal, unfair, but at this point, I think anyone would be willing to do anything because if you decide to question this and go out looking for jobs, there's pretty much nothing out there,' one told ITV in 2021.
'Everyone feels that they are being taken advantage of because of the situation they are in.'
Stay Belvedere said at the time that it would conduct an investigation to ensure any 'issues or errors' would be 'swiftly rectified'.
And earlier this month, hotel owners told the Daily Telegraph they were chasing Stay Belvedere for payments they were owed for giving over their facilities to be used by asylum seekers.
One said: 'We are saying that if there is no payment, there is no option. We will have to evict the asylum seekers.'
The firm later said it would pay this month's fees upfront while contracts are rearranged after SBHL was dropped by the Government.
'All commitments to landlords have been met for April,' a spokesperson told MailOnline today.
The income of the company after December 2022 is unclear. From October that year, the company said it was moving to a 'new agency model' with a 'related entity' that would take over its business.
It did not name the entity - but the company said its turnover would 'substantially reduce' in the next period because of the change.
Information on their earnings since is scant because a year later, they filed 'small company' accounts, which are not compelled to declare income, profit or dividends.
Companies must meet two of the following three tests to be considered a small company: a turnover of £15million or less; under £7.5million on its balance sheet; or less than 50 employees.
A spokesperson for SBHL told MailOnline that its financial statements had been externally audited to ensure 'full compliance with applicable accounting, auditing and fiduciary standards'.
On dividends, they added: 'The dividends paid to shareholders were compliant, lawful and reflected earnings.'
Asked why directors and other company figures were not on the company website, they said: 'Given the sensitive nature of our work and past threats, we do not publish identifiable photos of team members or service users.
'Our website uses illustrative stock images to protect the privacy and safety of staff and residents.'
Safwan Adam and Bassam Gilini did not respond to MailOnline's requests for comment. But refugee charities have blasted the pair for paying themselves, and shareholders, with public cash.
Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: 'Every pound that fills the pockets of these companies is a pound that could be spent in our communities.
'These accommodation contracts have allowed firms to rip off the taxpayer while people seeking asylum are forced to live in housing that's harmful.
'It's time we fund councils to run a publicly owned housing system, so every penny of public cash earmarked for refugees is spent protecting people and strengthening the services we all use.'
Among the 51 hotels SBHL was operating is the Ibis Budget hotel in Bishop's Stortford, near London Stansted Airport. The two-star hotel was being run like a 'four-star all-inclusive' resort, one insider claimed to The Sun.
A board of weekly activities, published by the newspaper, included singing, English lessons and cooking classes, as well as a drop-in session with Citizens Advice.
The insider said: 'They get three fresh meals a day included. Fresh fruit is available around the clock.
'I don't begrudge the kids getting the help and the residents are generally polite. But it does make you wonder will they ever want to leave?
'They all have phones and I imagine they send pictures to their mates saying, 'Come over here!''
The Home Office has a longstanding policy of refusing to comment on specific arrangements at individual migrant hotels.
However, sources insisted that activities such as a children's entertainment bus and music lessons were provided by external agencies, including charities.
SBHL would only tell The Sun that it provided a 'consistent bus service, which has been well-received by guests'.
Clearsprings, which reported a pre-tax profit of £120million on income of £1.74billion in the year to January 2024, declined to comment on the performance of its subcontractor.
Around 9,600 people are thought to have arrived in the UK by small boat this year, the highest level to date on record
Its founder Graham King, rakes in £4.8million a day from his enterprises, set up around the same time immigration services were opened up to the private sector at the turn of the millenium.
He was catapulted onto the Sunday Times Rich List this year after cashing in on the UK's migrant crisis with an estimated net worth of £750million.
Housing asylum seekers in hotels costs the Government £5.5million every day, according to reporting last month by The Times.
Some 38,000 are spread across 213 hotels - though this is set to drop to 206 by the end of May.
While the Government under Labour has committed to ending the use of migrant hotels, the number of small boats arrivals is at its highest level on record and shows no sign of slowing down.
In fact, the number of asylum seekers in hotels has risen by around 8,000 since last summer.
More than 9,600 people have arrived in the UK via small boat this year to date. At least 11 people have died trying to make the crossing since January.
Last month, the Home Office was told by Treasury chiefs to find cheaper ways of housing migrants in order to stop firms like SBLH from 'profiteering' from the ongoing migrant crisis.
Sir Keir Starmer's new Office for Value for Money said in a damning report that companies like Clearsprings, Serco, Mears and SBLH had 'made record profits in recent years, leading to accusations of profiteering'.
It cited research by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which found that the cost to UK taxpayers of each asylum seeker had increased from £17,000 to £41,000 between 2020 and 2024.
A Home Office spokesperson said: 'In Autumn 2023, there were more than 400 asylum hotels in use across the UK at a cost of almost £9 million per day, and in the months before the election, the asylum backlog soared again as decision-making collapsed, placing the entire asylum system under unprecedented strain.
'That was the situation the government inherited but we have begun to restore order, with a rapid increase in asylum decision-making and the removal of more than 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK.
'By restoring order to the system, we will be able to end the use of asylum hotels over time, and reduce the overall costs to the taxpayer of asylum accommodation.