Albanian who cannot be deported taunts Home Office with personalised number plate

Yahoo

a day ago

Credit: dorian.doriii/Tiktok
An Albanian convicted burglar who cannot be deported taunted the Home Office with a personalised number plate on his £80,000 Mercedes.
Dorian Puka, 28, who has been jailed and deported twice from the UK for burglaries, filmed himself peeling the cover off his new registration plate: DO24 AMG, reflecting his name and high-end marque of the Mercedes.
He then posted a video of himself on Tik Tok driving through London onto the M25 towards the intersection with the M40 to Oxford.
It is his latest defiant mockery of Home Office officials who are powerless to deport him because he has claimed asylum. He cannot be removed until his case is fully considered – a process that could take months or years, given the backlog of immigration tribunal appeals.
He was originally jailed for nine months in 2016 and then deported the following year for attempting to break into a property when the owner spotted him on a webcam while on holiday in France.
Yet, within a year, he managed to evade border controls and return to the UK where he carried out a string of burglaries in London.
Puka was eventually caught wearing an expensive watch he had stolen when he was spotted by plain clothes officers patrolling Surbiton in south west London. He was jailed for three-and-a-half years and then deported in March 2020.
Awaiting immigration tribunal
During his time in prison in the UK, he earned notoriety for using an illegal mobile phone smuggled into the jail to post Instagram pictures of himself standing alongside the leader of an organised crime group who was serving a 12-year sentence for conspiracy to supply cocaine and money laundering.
After returning to his native Albania for several months, he travelled through Germany, Belgium and Netherlands before beating border checks to enter Britain again in December 2020, according to his Instagram account.
It is understood he has lodged an asylum application and has been on immigration bail and subject to an electronic tag since last year, awaiting an immigration tribunal to decide on his claim.
In December, he posted happy new year messages from a London nightclub alongside a picture of himself celebrating while smoking a shisha pipe next to a belly dancer.
Three months earlier, he posted a series of videos of himself driving a £300,000 Ferrari in London on his TikTok and Instagram accounts, as well as images of himself with dozens of Rolex watches and other expensive cars.
'A proper wrong 'un'
Puka also taunted Nigel Farage by posting a picture of himself eating and drinking with a Photoshopped image of the Reform party leader giving a thumbs-up.
Mr Farage had described him as a 'proper wrong 'un' who was 'walking all over' the UK authorities.
The Albanian's sources of funding remain unknown, but reports suggest he has been staying in a £250,000 two-bed terraced flat in Hounslow, west London.
A Home Office spokesman said: 'Foreign nationals who commit crimes should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced. Mr Puka has been deported by the UK before. It is UK law that we cannot deport individuals where there are claims or representations still awaiting decision.
'We have already begun delivering a major surge in immigration enforcement and returns activity to remove people with no right to be in the UK, with 30,000 returned since the new government came into power.'
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