FRENCH sport store giant Decathlon is raking in a fortune selling life jackets to illegal migrants preparing to cross the Channel.
The chain’s superstore at Dunkirk-sur-Mer has been swamped with refugees from across the globe preparing to board small boats to the UK.
But bosses are refusing to halt booming sales of fluorescent orange £11 “Storm” vests claiming it has a responsibility to save their lives.
Groups of migrants have been inside the store in a TV news report trying on vests while shop staff wheeled in extra stocks.
Sales have continued to spiral even though Decathlon recently banned canoes and inflatable boats from its stores in northern France to deter crossings.
And furious UK politicians and even French mayors blasted the jacket racket yesterday.
Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “It is outrageous that this French store is facilitating illegal migration by selling life jackets.
“It is a total disgrace that this large French corporation is deliberately and knowingly profiting from people smuggling.
“They are encouraging and facilitating illegal immigration just to make money. In the UK this is illegal – the French government should prosecute them.”
Guy Allemand, the Mayor of Sangatte, said “The sale of life jackets at Decathlon stores is disgraceful.
“A resident alerted one of my deputies. We checked. There were even migrants in the store buying ones that are currently on sale.”
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart said authorities were monitoring the nautical sections of Decathlon stores.
She said: “Life jackets, on the one hand, save lives, but at the same time, their sale contributes to fueling the mafia-like organisations of an entire system that leads people to their deaths.”
But migrant aid organizations insisted removing life jackets from sale would not slow the flow of boat people across the Channel.
A spokesman for Calais-based Utopia 56 said: ‘This will never stop anyone, at the end of their migration journey, from joining their family in England or fleeing their regime.’
A spokesman for Decathlon said it had removed inflatable boats from its stores around Calais and Dunkirk in 2021.
Bosses took action claiming at the time that the products were being “misused as boats to cross the English Channel, contrary to the “intended design of these products.”
The company justified the removal of the boats by explaining that this misuse could ‘endanger the lives of people using them during a crossing.’
But Decathlon has now insisted it wants to keep “products that improve safety at sea, such as life jackets, oars, and thermal protection”.
A spokesman added that its stores do not sell life jackets in bulk.
