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.
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00:00A gang forced 16 victims to work at either the fast-food restaurant or the factory,
00:04which supplied Asda, Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose.
00:11Well-established signs of slavery, including paying the wages of four men into one bank account,
00:17were missed while the victims from the Czech Republic were exploited over more than four years.
00:22McDonald's UK said it had improved systems for spotting
00:26potential risks, while the British retail consortium said its members would learn from
00:30the case. Six members of a family-run human trafficking network from the Czech Republic
00:36have been convicted in two criminal trials, which were delayed by the Covid pandemic.
00:41Reporting restrictions have prevented coverage of much of the case, but BBC England can now
00:46reveal the full scale of the gang's crimes and the missed opportunities to stop them.
00:52Nine victims were forced to work at the McDonald's branch in Caxton,
00:55Cambridgeshire. Nine worked at the Pita Bread Company, with factories in Hoddeston in
01:01Hertfordshire and Tottenham in north London, which made supermarket-owned brand products.
01:06There were 16 victims in total across both sites, as two worked at both McDonald's and the factory.