'Gangmasters' held in crackdown on modern slave trade
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Police have arrested 40 people, including a Ukrainian man believed to be a powerful gangmaster, in a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Police have arrested 40 people, including a Ukrainian man believed to be a powerful gangmaster, in a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigrants.
During a series of co-ordinated dawn raids, police detained 38 people in Scotland and two in Norfolk. The arrests were the latest stage of a wider battle against the exploitation of immigrants as cheap labour.
They came seven weeks after 20 Chinese workers, many illegal immigrants, drowned while picking cockles at Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, after they were cut off by the tide. Their deaths prompted calls for a crackdown on gangmasters.
"Our aim was to stop immigrants, some legal, some illegal, from being abused," said Detective Inspector Paul Cunningham, of Norfolk Police, who led the investigation in eastern England.
"These people are modern-day slaves, working 15-hour days, living in overcrowded, unsuitable conditions and paid a pittance for their trouble whilst their gangmasters live in luxury and launder the profits.
"Gangmasters working illegally cause real misery for vulnerable people, who live in over-crowded conditions. This is the 21st-century slave trade."
Officers from Norfolk, Aberdeen, Cambridgeshire, Essex, London and the Immigration Service targeted addresses across the country as part of the operation.
Police said six people were arrested on suspicion of facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants into the UK, arranging residency and money-laundering. A further four men, suspected of being "lieutenants in the organisation", were also detained. Thirty-eight workers were arrested in Aberdeen, mostly from Eastern Europe, under the Immigration Act. Most were detained as they were on their way to work in a fish processing plant.
The Ukrainian man arrested is in his early 40s, and is thought to have arrived in England as an asylum-seeker four years ago. He was arrested in King's Lynn, Norfolk, and taken for questioning at nearby Thetford police station. His house was searched. Another man, believed to be Ukrainian, was also arrested in King's Lynn.
Firearms were recovered from addresses searched in Norfolk, as well as large amounts of documentation and cash, a police spokeswoman said.
The main thrust of the investigation, code-named Operation Absent and partly funded by the Home Office, focused on money-laundering and facilitating the illegal securing of entry into the UK.
Hundreds of immigrants from the Baltic states are believed to be employed in fish processing plants in Scotland.
Detectives suspect that companies may be unaware they are employing illegal labourers who have paid large sums of money for false documents.