The little-known Irara NGO was the largest non-state recipient of Frontex funding last year, receiving some €39m in 2025. The NGO is headed by UK security veterans and operates in 36 countries, including Afghanistan.
Nikolaj Nielsen
Almost 50 people have been returned to Afghanistan so far this year with support from Frontex, the EU’s border agency. Marketed as “voluntary returns,” the cases are being handled in Afghanistan by Irara, a little-known Belgium-based NGO headed by people from the UK’s private security industry.
The revelations come amid European Commission efforts to indirectly normalise relations with the ultra-conservative Taliban regime, in the hope of facilitating deportations to a country devastated by decades of war and governed by a regime accused of systematic repression and human rights violations.
Frontex’s executive director Hans Leitjens told EUobserver it cannot carry out forced returns to Afghanistan – but left that possibility open, depending on safety issues and what the EU and its member states demand.
“That might be the case, I don’t know yet,” he said, earlier this month in Brussels.
With the Taliban visiting Brussels in June, a lucrative cottage deportation industry that now includes Afghanistan has been quietly growing for months under the auspices of Frontex’s EU Reintegration Programme (EURP).
Frontex says the EURP provides essential financial and practical support to migrants returning to their home countries. And it does so by partnering with local organisations and NGOs, it says.
Its biggest NGO partner is Irara, which was the largest non-state recipient of Frontex funding last year. It received about €39m in 2025 after being awarded €19.5m in 2024.
Co-founded in 2017 by Jeremy Aldridge and Jason Ollivent, Irara has seen its equity and assets explode as the EU and its member states step up deportations, following new EU rules on returns.
Lynda Ollivent and Melanie Aldridge were later appointed directors, suggesting the organisation may function as a family-run husband-and-wife business that operates in 36 countries.
Beyond the financial windfall, Jeremy Aldridge spent more than 13 years at Serco, the British multinational, where he helped expand its immigration services arm.
Irara’s managing director, Danny Spencer, is a former UK prison governor who also worked for Mitie Care and Custody Ltd, a company that runs immigration detention and escort contracts.
Even though it has been working in Afghanistan since at least 2021, Irara’s public-facing website makes no mention that it has partnered with Frontex in the country. It instead lists Nigeria, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Vietnam.
“Irara is our partner in Afghanistan,” said Chris Borowski, Frontex spokesperson, when asked to confirm.
Operating with a letter-box office near the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, the NGO’s total equity soared from just over €16,000 in 2021 to almost €8m in 2024.
And its total assets went from €3.57m to €15.46m in a single year, presumably driven by money owed to it by Frontex and other government clients.
