Operation Ruby - Human Trafficking - another successful swoop against gangmasters

More than 200 staff from nine organisations including the East Midlands Foreign National Crime Team, Northamptonshire Police, the UK Human Trafficking Centre, the UK Borders Agency, Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority were involed in a swoop yetserday on a field near Holbeach in South Lincolnshire where some 6o immigrants from countries across Eastern Europe, including Poland and Lithuania were picking leeks for UK supermarkets.

This resulted in 3 men being arested on suspicion of human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation.They More than sixty men and women - migrant workers from countries across Eastern Europe, including Poland and Lithuania - who were picking leeks in the field as part of an organised gang have been held in custody at Kettering and Wellingborough on suspicion of
people trafficking and money laundering.

Search warrants involving Northamptonshire Police, Kettering Borough Council and Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service have been carried out at premises in Kettering where it is believed that the migrant workers were living in conditions that were overcrowded and potentially unsafe.

The action – called Operation Ruby – centres on allegations that people were recruited through advertisements and agencies in Eastern Europe and travelled to the UK on the promise of work.

UPDATE 20/11/08 BBC "Farming Today" report that 9 have been arrested, 21 premises searched and the operation took 6 months to plan.