Signs that modern slavery victims were being forced to work at a McDonald’s branch and a factory supplying bread products to major supermarkets were missed for years, the BBC has found. A gang forced 16 victims to work at either the fast-food restaurant or the factory - which supplied Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. Well-established signs of slavery, including paying the wages of four men into one bank account, were missed while the victims from the Czech Republic were exploited over more than four years.
McDonald’s UK said it had improved systems for spotting “potential risks”, while the British Retail Consortium said its members would learn from the case. Six members of a family-run human trafficking network from the Czech Republic have been convicted in two criminal trials, which were delayed by the Covid pandemic. Reporting restrictions have prevented coverage of much of the case, but BBC England can now reveal the full scale of the gang’s crimes - and the missed opportunities to stop them.
Nine victims were forced to work at the McDonald’s branch in Caxton, Cambridgeshire. Nine worked at the pitta bread company, with factories in Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire and Tottenham in north London, which made supermarket own-brand products. There were 16 victims in total across both sites, as two worked at both McDonald’s and the factory.
The victims - who were all vulnerable, most having experienced homelessness or addiction - earned at least the .