A McDonald’s in the United Kingdom missed signs of modern slavery for years while a human trafficking gang forced victims to work at the burger joint as well as a nearby bread factory, according to a report.
Six members of a family-run gang from the Czech Republic have been convicted of forcing 16 victims to work as many as 100 hours a week — even as the gang pocketed their cash and spent it on luxury cars, gold jewelry and real estate, according to the BBC.
The victims’ employers overlooked a number of warning signs – like multiple employees having their earnings sent to the same bank account or using the same home addresses, the report said.
“It really concerns me that so many red flags were missed, and that maybe the companies didn’t do enough to protect vulnerable workers,” Dame Sara Thornton, the former independent anti-slavery commissioner, told the BBC.
Nine victims were forced to work at a McDonald’s in Cambridgeshire and nine worked at Specialty Flatbreads – a bread company with factories that supplied UK supermarkets. Two of the victims worked at both the McDonald’s and Specialty Flatbreads.
Most of the victims had been homeless or struggling with addiction while living in the Czech Republic, according to the BBC.
While the victims earned at least a minimum wage while working in the UK, the gang members stole nearly all of their pay. They gave their victims only a few pounds a day and forced them to live in squalid conditions, including a leaking shed and unheated caravan, the report said.
The victims were recaptured more than once when they escaped and tried to make it home.
The scheme – which lasted at least seven years – ended in October 2019. The victims had alerted authorities in the Czech Republic, who passed the information to the British police force.
The victims’ employers had overlooked numerous signs of modern slavery for years, according to the report.
At the McDonald’s restaurant, at least four victims’ wages – totaling nearly $288,000 – were being funneled into a single account that was controlled by the gang, the report said.
The victims were unable to speak English – so their job applications were completed by one of the gang members, who was even allowed to sit in during interviews as a “translator,” the report said.
Victims worked up to 70- and 100-hour work weeks at the McDonald’s. One victim had worked a 30-hour shift, the report said.
Nine victims working at the bread factory used the same home address in London during their employment, according to the report.
Detective Sergeant Chris Acourt told the BBC the companies missed “massive opportunities” to identify the slavery and report it sooner.
The gang – led by brothers Zdenek and Ernest Drevenak – withheld their victims’ passports and intimidated them through violence.
“We were afraid,” Pavel, one of the victims, told the BBC. “If we were to escape and go home, [Ernest Drevenak] has a lot of friends in our town, half the town were his mates.”
The gang “treated their victims like livestock” by feeding them just enough “to keep them going,” Metropolitan Police Officer Melanie Lillywhite told the BBC.
The victims were not allowed to use their phones or the internet, did not speak English and were monitored by video surveillance.
Pavel said he believes McDonald’s – where some of the victims worked between 2015 and 2019 – should bear some of the blame for his enslavement.
“I do feel partially exploited by McDonald’s because they didn’t act,” he said. “I thought if I was working for McDonalds, that they would be a little bit more cautious, that they will notice it.”
The company told the BBC the current location franchisee – Ahmet Mustafa – had only been “exposed to the full depth” when he spoke with authorities.
McDonald’s said it started a partnership this year with Unseen, an anti-slavery charity, and has “taken action” to better “detect and deter” risks in the future.
“With our franchisees, we will play our part alongside government, NGOs and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery,” a McDonald’s UK & Ireland spokesperson told The Post.
None of the supermarkets that used Specialty Flatbreads as a supplier noticed the mistreatment, either. Victims worked at the factories between 2012 and 2019.
Sainsbury’s said it stopped using the factory in 2016. The other companies only ended their partnerships after police rescued the victims in 2019.
Specialty Flatbreads’ director Andrew Charalambous told the BBC he had supported the police and prosecution.
“From our perspective we didn’t break the law in any way, having said that, yes, maybe you’re right in that maybe there were certain telltale signs or things like that, but that would have been for the HR department who were dealing with it on the front line,” he said.
The company did not respond to requests for further comment.
“It is important that the retail industry learns from cases like this to continually strengthen due diligence,” the British Retail Consortium told the BBC.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
