Calais police have smashed 19 people smuggler gangs which each gained illegal earnings of between £500,000 and £1.4million from migrants desperate to reach Britain.

A total of 1,225 smugglers working for seven Albanian gangs and another 12 networks run by various other nationalities have been arrested since the beginning of the year, French newspaper Le Monde revealed.

But little of the cash - accrued since the beginning of the year they were caught - extracted from the migrants of mostly Albanian origin was seized by police as the money was paid to gang leaders up front in Albania by migrants before their journeys began.

French police have arrested 1,225 people working in the people smuggling trade since the beginning of the year

Hundreds of people, mostly from Albania, paid the gangs vast sums of money to sneak them into Britain. Pictured is a migrant climbing under a fence in Calais, France

In the latest case, six people allegedly organised all-in trips from Albania to the UK charging up to £5,000 per passenger. Pictured are a group of migrants at the camp called 'New Jungle' in Calais

Alarming accounts given by smugglers under question reveal the scale of what has become a highly lucrative trade for gangsters preying on migrants internationally and particularly in Calais where an estimated 5,000 are squatting in camps and making nightly attempts to reach the UK.

In the latest case, four Albanians and two Frenchwomen arrested on August 10 allegedly organised all-in trips from Albania to the UK charging up to £5,000 per passenger and paying drivers between £500 and £1,000 in the UK for each person on arrival in the UK, a prosecutor in Boulogne revealed on Friday.

The six smugglers allegedly planned a total of 44 smuggling trips involving 250 migrants this year before they were caught.

Twenty-four of them involving 149 Albanians were successful. In the Calais jungle on the outskirts of the Pakistani, Afghan, Iraqi and Vietnamese smugglers have homed in on communities of their own countrymen.

Along the coast at the camp near Dunkirk, British cars driven by British passport holders with Iranian and Iraqi origins are used to ferry migrants to motorway rest areas in France and Belgium where they are loaded into lorries heading across the Channel to the UK.

Dunkirk Police swooped on the camp on Thursday and arrested four men. On Friday night at the Teteghem camp in an apparent revenge shooting an Iraqi man was wounded by shotgun pellets and taken to Dunkirk hospital.

Le Monde revealed that tariffs charged by people smugglers vary according to nationalities.

Eritreans, who are the poorest but most numerous at the Jungle in Calais, pay smugglers £300 to be stowed away in lorries. Iraqis pay between £700 and £1200 and Albanians, Indians and Syrians - the wealthiest candidates for new lives in Britain - are charged between £5,000 and £7,000 euros.

Eritreans, who are the poorest but most numerous at the Jungle (pictured) in Calais, pay smugglers £300 to be stowed away in lorries

Along the coast at the camp (pictured) near Dunkirk, cars driven by British passport holders with Iranian and Iraqi origins are used to ferry migrants to rest stops where they board trucks bound for the UK

The people smuggling gangs operating out of the camp known as The Jungle (pictured) in Calais even offer their customers money back guarantees should they be caught by border police

Chinese and Vietnamese migrants are offered VIP deals, revealed Le Monde, with smugglers charging £14,000 for luxury trips from the countries of origin to northern France. Chinese and Vietnamese migrants are not stowed away in trailers. They right up front with the lorry drivers in the cabs and are given money back guarantees if they are detected by border police and sent back to the Calais Jungle.

Indians, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi gangs specialise in supplying false papers and passports, Le Monde revealed.

In March in Strasbourg, police smashed a £4million racket run by Bangladeshi smugglers who supplied false student visas for the UK.

In June it emerged that a Sri Lankan gang was supplying false British passports made in Thailand and delivered to customers for between twelve and £16,000.

Calais has been in turmoil for the past month as authorities grapple with the chaos caused by migrants attempting to reach British shores.