Varning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
An investigation into a gang who held hundreds of Polish victims captive in Britain.
Set them to work, stole their wages, made them eat from skips, wash in canals and threatened to kill them if they tried to escape.
January 1018
It’s 5:00 a.m in West Bromwich,Detective Constable Mike Wright is on his way to arrest a man he believes is involved in human trafficking and may have breached an anti slavery court order.
Mike’s part of a West Midlands team carying out the biggest ever investigation into modern slavery, opertion Fort.
The man there after is suspected of beloning to a gang that’s held scores of people captive and stolen their wages.
The police have given Panorama unique access to every twist and turn of this groundbreaking case,the police believe that arresting this man and havig him locked up is the only way to stop him exploiting people.
Detecives need every piece of evidence to show how this man and the gang he belongs to, and ensave people for personal gain,
They find designer clothes, perfume and gold jewerly.
They also find passports belonging to men living at the adress and jackets they believe may tie the gang to suspicious activity captured on CCTV.
Eight gang members have already been charged under due to stand trial in Birmingham,othersare on the run in Poland.
They fled after being arrested and released on police bail.
The crime group seem to be ble to leave the country without a trace of them leaving the country without the police being able to stop them.
The last thing the police want is for this man to go on the run too.
The custody officers have never heard of his lawyers,it turns out the suspect is represented by a top London firm,Mike is hoping he won’t be given bail,the man appeared in court and was set free on bail by a district judge, he later skipped the country to Poland.
Birmingham Crown Court 9 months later, the trial of five menbers of the slave gang is about to begin,the trial of the other three will begin as soon as this one is over.
It’s the largest human trafficking labor exploitation case Britain ever being tried under the modern slavery act and it is taking down a very large organized crime group and gouging out its heart.
There’s a mountain of evidence.
Caroline Haughey has to shape it into a compelling case will convince a jury.
What Caroline is dealing with is a large highly organized criminal Enterprise each slaver has a specific role, at the heat of the gang is a Roma family from central Poland.
It’s matriach is Justyna Parczewska she met slaves when they first arrived.
Marek Brzezinski organized housing for the captives.
While Marek Chowaniec got them into Britain.
Hid close friend Julianna Chodakowicz arranged work for the slaves.
Natalia Zmuda stole the slaves wages.
This is absolutely a family business amongst the people involved in these case are fathers,sons, cousins, uncles,mothers, aunts ,so although it’s family structured and that’s where the core trust is a few other trusted people are brought in to facilitate with their specific skill set.
The slaves were held in houses across West Midlands,they were put to work in well – known businesses,the gang committed their crimes in plain sight
There are a grou of people predominantly family focused who share a vision on how they can exploit this commodity.
The commodity happens to be human beings , a human being doesn’t have one purpose,they are there to be utilized in any conceivable way that they can be.
Caroline has to how the defendants were working together to profit from the misery of others.
The key to sucess is keeping things clear and simple.
The case is a huge challenge for the small team,detectives michelle and mike need to check all the evidence and get witnessess to court and nick and emma have to help Caroline fight 10 defense lawyers, they have a vast amount of paperwork to prepare.
The trial is due to last four months Nick Dale led the police investigation that’s put the gang members in the dock .
Piotr Pawski was one of the first witnesses to come forward in 2015.
The paperwork for the evidence bundles has arrived,now it needs to be filed in the right place.
It’s become clear to the police that the gang they ‘ve caught is one of many operating acroos Britain, they believe hme office estimates of the number of slaves are way too low.
The case first came to light through anti-slavery charity Hope forJustice,four years ago,one of its workers reported desperate people turning up at a church soup kitchen.
When the police interiewed the slaves they all told the same story of intrappment, exploitation, and threats of violence.
The police beleive there were 300 victims,more than 80 provided statements.
It was no accident the slavers based themselves in the heart of England .
The good thing about the area and why it helped the traffickers in a way was that that there was already an established Polish community here.
When victims came into the country they would come via coach, generally speaking they were in west Bromwich or Smethwich close by to where the traffickers were living and also because of the motorway networks, the M5 just on the doorstep and the M6.it was easy for the victims to be transported down to London to Wales and other areas.
there’s affordable housing in these areas so the trafficers will be able to get as many as 10 ,12 victims into one house a three or four bedroom house at a cost of about £500 a month.
all the things that they need are on their doorstep basically.
The slaves picked their targets carefully too the desperate those with drug or alcohol problems on the run from the law and the homeless.
Bydgoszcz northen Poland an industria city with both wealth and poverty, many ofthe slaves came from .
Recruitment would take place around areas where homeless people were attracted to train stations ,homeless shelters, large shopping centers.
There’s no single geographical area,the tentical of this organized spread far and wide in Poland.
So,this is the Rondo shopping center , it’s quite a landmark and it’s probably about 5 or 10 minutes from the busstation,so it’s sort of ideal hunting ground for traffickers.
These men could easily be exploited by new gangs of slavers.
It’s abslolutely still going on ,the risk versus the reward is worth doing it, it’s financially viable and there are plenty of people who can be victimized.
It’s evident that there are homeless people they certainly fit the demographic of the victims in the case,it’s potentially a really good place to recruit people.
Once the slaves had been recruited the traffickers put them under pressure.
The technique used was making the travel to the UK very quick, so theu’d recruit someone on monday and they’d be traveling on the Tuesday, and that would create disoriention for the complainings because there was no one to tell they’d gone , and opportunities has arisen ,this is a oneofe.
Slaves were recruited from small towns as well as big cities.
Bydgoszcz Bus Station, dozens of slaves were trafficked to the UK from here.
back in Birmingham ,the trial has now been running for 2 months.
Once the slaves were in the UK, the traffickers controlled their every move the Caroline Haughey must explain this systematic manipulation to the jury.
The slaves had been promised free travel,free accommodation and£ 300 a week the reality was different,they were paid very little and charged for everything.
Soon they were deep in debt to their captors.
Victims don’t know their surroundings,they don’t speak the language,they might be told ” if you leave, the police will pick you up,beat you up,they ‘ll find, they ‘ll deport you”
And because these victims don’t any better,they’ll believe what the traffickers are saying because they don’t know the level of exploitation at this stage.
So that’s kind of what you might call the isolation phase where, they isolate the individuals and show them that this is the experience of a Polish work in the UK
Once the traffickers had psychological control of the slaves they took control of their finances, they’d be taken by one of the key people in the organization often,Marek Chowaniec who spole excellent english taken to a bank,bank account was opened in their name.
Most of the complainants spoke next to no english.
The slaves may have had bank accounts,but they had no cotnrol over them.
Their name would be given, their identity card would be taken over and photocopied (which is normal) but the adress given for the bank account bore no relation to where the complainant was staying but would be an address under the control of the organization.
When the police raided the trafficker homes,they foud a Bentley..
…Designer clothing.
Cash and a stack of debit cards as well as evidence that they had control of 174 bank accounts, in total, police believed the gang had made £ 2 million.
There was significant quantity of bank cards that are in other people’s names and if you turns those over you’ll find that almost all of them have the pin written on the back of them.
And that just ensures that whoever’s given that card can access any of the funds from that account.
Bank records show how the slavers siphoned off victims cash, gang members were captured on CCTV making withdrawal after withdrawal .
This is early in the investigation before anybody had been arrested at this point,then we see him leave .
several high street banks were targeted by the gang.
They opened 72 accounts at TSB,no real asking of questions ever took place,it seemed to be quite normal for someone else to act as the interpreter without ever kind of questioning why you are you acting is the interpreter, do we have someone else who’s polish speaker.
Bearing in mind, this all took place in West Bromwich in the same high street and the same person over and over again coming in.
Getting bank accounts for the slaves was one thing,getting them jobs was quite another, the solution was to use moles inside employment agencies.
Molds like Julianna Chodakowicz, she got a job at E response in Westchester now renamed workforce solutions.
She was specifically dealing with the traffic cuz to bring the victims into work, so she would even say that if somebody came into irresponse who wasn’t sent by the traffickers she would turn them away so that were free jobs for the victims.
Juliana’s handler and close friend was senior gang member Marek Chowaniec.
On the morning of her first day Marek Chowaniec sent her a list of names of people he controlled for her to register at the agency,because Julianna was there, she enabled huge numbers of people all living at the same address to be registered.
That would normally where those proper precesses in place be picked up,flag markers for sharing same address, so her inside knwoledge facilitated extraordinary numbers of people going through.
she enabled them to be slicker,because they could literally put people in work the minute they arrived in the UK,this was guaranteed employment and guaranteed immediately.
There’s a huge demand for unskilled labor.
Sandfields farm in Worcestershire and Warwickshire supplies some of the UK’s leading supermarkets,it fell victim to the slavers,despite goint to great lenght to higher legitimate workers ,the agency sandfields used was E response where Julianna Chodakowicz was working.
one of the slaves employed at sandfield for two days was Piotr Pawski .
He was shuttled to work by his captors, when he complained one of them took him and another slave for a drive.
He found out that they wanted to escape, he said yes you can escape but i can’t guarantee in what state, you can just go to the forest and dig a hole for yourselves or you’ll be driven around in the boots like a sack of potatoes”
At Birmingham Crown Court Julianna Chodakowicz is claiming there’s nothing wrong with her friend Marek, paying her a commission to get slaves jobs.
By trying to use the word commission she’s trying to make it sound like it’s legitimate source of income, that she’s entitled to receive.
For their own protection the slaves rescued by operation fort were moved to cities at least 2 hours away from Birmingham where they were looked after by the salvation army.
It has a government contract to care for the victims of human trafficking across England and Wales.3,354 last year and rising.
This is a safe house run by the Salvation Army for adult victims of modern slavery,this safe house is one of dozens run by the charity.
They receive referrals from every single part of the UK and that is towns, villages, and cities, affluent areas ,poor areas
there’s no discrimination from the sort of places that people will and can be exploited in,it wasn’t easy for the former slaves to trust the people now looking after them.
It took me a very long time to actually start taking about it and open up,it took about a month and a half.”
They come with untreated injuries with no documents with clothes they’re standing up in and nothing more,they’ve come out of a horrendous ordeal and their faith in mankind has been really shaken, so althoug the nice people from Salvation Army are saying “we’re going to help you” it might take a little time to build that trust but they are with people that are going to help.
Mariusz Rycaczewski had been held by the slave gang for 4 months as a former soldier in the French Foreign Legion,he was better equipped t han most to cope but he became a target when he tried to escape.
The criminal beat me in my ribs and i have black eyes,sometime i sleeping with big knife because i was afraid they come back again”
What happened to Mariusz is extremely typical where one individual might be singled out and actually physically assaulted as an example to the other guys.
And unfortunately for mariusz ,he was that man, he was seen to be a potential threat and a potential runner and he was beaten up several times and that’s a threat to everybody .
You step out of line this could happen to you.Once the slaves are safe,the police try to persuade them to give evidence in court.
It’s very difficult to give evidence for a number of reasons,they are going to relive what was an extremely traumatic experience where freedom was taken away from them and they were living in really difficult situations.
And then the fear of the perpetrators ,the orginazed natured of this crime and the fact that it spreads through criminal networks is pretty scary.
Because you are stepping out and you just don’t know where you might come across these people again.
Mariusz , like many of the slaves has a criminal past,he fled Polen after being convicted of burglary,he’s the subjectof a European arrest,defense lawyers will use this to attack his credibility.
The defense are perfectly entitled to run whatever case they choose to, one of the defenses being run is that all of these people are lying.
Caroline Haughey job is to show that these individuals are credible because you don’t get 82 people telling the same story who don’t know each other.
After victims have given their evidence Caroline Haughey thanks each one personally .
June 2018
It’s 4:30 a.m in Bourneville DC Mike Wrights looking for the gang member who skipped bail and went on the run 3 months ago.
An anonymous tip came forward to say that he may be at this address in December last year,officer visited,there was up to four remaining nationals living there who were potentialo victims of trafficking butdidn’t want to come forward at the time.
the gang member isn’t here, the rooms are crammed with people who don’t speak english,Mike is suspicious.
The case will be logged for intelligence purposes,this team don’t have the rexources for another criminal investigation.
It’s higly likely that some form of exploitation is going on but Mike simply cannot look into further human trafficking investigations involving different communities whilst this investigation going on.
February 2019
After 4 months the trial is finally drawing to a conclusion ,caroline is working on her closing spech,it’s the last chance she’ll have to remind the jury of the evidence given in court by more than 60 slaves.
” Those 60 plus people from whom you have heard,have consistently described to you the same thing of then homeless, self -admitted addicts,or recently released from prison or United by desperation to work.
All describe how they were recruited…
The lies and deceit in which they were beguiled into the United Kingdom.
The same story about what happened on their arrival in the UK,who met them where they were taken.
The same story about how they were moved from place to place without notice, filty, ovecrowded pest ridden condition,little or no food, and abuse both mental and physical.
60 plus people who all came to the UK with one purpose to earn a living to work hard, to receive a wage for that work.
60 plus people linked only by their treatment at the hands of these defendants, and the others mentioned on the indictment.
There guilt betrayed by their words and their actions,of that we the Crown say you on each count that they face can be quite sure,we therefore urge you to return verdicts of guilty.”
The five gang members convicted in the first trial are sentenced between them to 35 years behind bars.
Later the three other members including family elder Ignacy Brzezinski are also convicted they get a total of 20 years.
Back in Poland DC Mike Wrights trying to track down some of the 2 million ppunds the slavers made by exploiting the vulnerable,if the police can prove the traffickers own properties they may be able to seize them.
The slaves caughtby operation Fort will be behind bars for years.
The police don’t believe they’ve solved the problem but they do hope this case will draw attention to the true scale of it.
It is a crime in plain sight, there are people whose nextdoor neighbors wil be victims of trafficking , there are people who will have their car washed by a victim of human trafficking,people who have a parcel delivered that has come through a parcel depot staffed by victims by human trafficking.
It is everywhere ,we probably touch receive by something that has gone through the victim human trafficking every day.
Modern slavery is an endemic problem not just in the United Kingdom but worldwide,the statistics are that 42 million people are victims of it.
That’s the combined population of New York, London and Tokyo.
The slaves who testified in court may now be physically free,but they can’t escape the memory of what happened to them….