More than a dozen people trafficked from the Czech Republic to the UK were forced to work for several years at a McDonald’s restaurant and a food factory supplying some of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains, an investigation has found. the BBC, despite the warning signs that could have alerted. employers to abuse.
A gang led by Czech brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak forced 16 victims — many of them homeless or addicted to drugs — to work, seizing their earnings and controlling them with threats and violence, police say.
The gang siphoned off most of the victims’ wages, leaving them with just a few pounds a day to live in cramped accommodations, including an unheated trailer and a leaking shed, according to CBS News’ partner network, the BBC.
Police said the gang used the stolen wages to buy luxury cars, jewelry and property. Six members of the Czech trafficking network were found guilty in two trials delayed by the Covid pandemic.
For four years, between 2015 and 2019, the victims worked at a branch of the American fast food chain in Cambridgeshire and at pitta bread factories in Hertfordshire and north London which supplied major British supermarket chains.
In response to the BBC report, McDonald’s UK said in a statement that it had improved its systems for detecting “potential risks”.
The company said it cares “deeply” about all its employees and promised it will “play our part alongside government, NGOs and society at large to help combat societal ills “. modern slavery“.
The British Retail Consortium said its members would learn from what happened.
Missed signs
Several glaring signs of modern slavery were ignored for years, according to the BBC, including four of the men having their wages paid into the same bank account and nine of the victims listing the same home address in north London.
At least some of the victims did not speak English, and a gang member reportedly attended their job interviews as an interpreter. They also worked very long hours – 70 to 100 hours per week – with one person working at least a 30-hour non-stop shift.
‘It really concerns me that so many warning signs have been missed and that businesses may not have done enough to protect vulnerable workers,’ says former UK independent anti-slavery commissioner , Dame Sara Thornton, on the BBC’s findings.
Detective Sergeant Chris Acourt, who led Cambridgeshire Police’s investigation, told the BBC “huge opportunities” had been missed.
“Ultimately, we could have stopped this exploitation much sooner if we had known about it,” he said.
The victims’ ordeal ended at the end of 2019, after some victims contacted the Czech police, who informed their British counterparts. On several occasions, some of the victims escaped their captors and fled to the Czech Republic, only to be tracked down and brought back to Britain.
Police said the trafficking victims’ passports were confiscated by the gang members and that the Drevenak brothers controlled them through fear and violence.
“We were scared,” Pavel, one of the victims, told the BBC. “If we were to escape and return home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town was his friends.
The gang “treated their victims like cattle”, Detective Inspector Melanie Lillywhite of London’s Metropolitan Police told the BBC, adding that they were only allowed enough food “to keep them going”. Police said the gang raked in the equivalent of nearly $290,000 from the four victims who worked alone at the McDonald’s during their exploitation.
Lillywhite said the gang monitored the victims with security cameras and banned them from using the phone or internet. Given all the restrictions and their lack of English skills, she said “they were really cut off from the outside world.”
Pavel told the BBC he was living homeless in the Czech Republic when the gang approached him with the promise of a well-paid job in the UK.
“You can’t undo the damage done to my mental health,” he told the BBC of his ordeal. “He will always live with me.”
Although the brothers were convicted of crimes related to trafficking Czech nationals, Pavel told the BBC that McDonald’s was partly to blame for what he experienced.
“I feel partially exploited by McDonald’s, because they didn’t act,” he said. “I thought if I worked for McDonald’s they would be a little more careful, they would notice.”
