Behind the facade of luxury cars and property deals, a sinister operation thrived, exploiting vulnerable migrants in a web of deceit and forced labour.
A small boat heads off in to the English Channel. (Image: Getty Images)
Eight gangsters who used illegal small boats migrants to run drug farms across the UK have been jailed for a total of almost 80 years. The men were part of two major organised crime groups who ran farms across the Midlands, London and the North of England, where migrants smuggled illegally into the UK were forced to work for them.
The first gang were dismantled following a National Crime Agency investigation into the activities of Birmingham-based people smuggler Mai Van Nguyen, 35.
He headed a criminal network involving fellow Vietnamese nationals Doung Dinh, 38, from Birmingham, and Nghia Dinh Tran, 24, from Lewisham, London, to exploit the desperate migrants into slave labour.
A trial at Birmingham Crown Court earlier this year heard how Shamraiz Akhtar and Tasawar Hussain, both 50 and from Birmingham, were taxi drivers who would ferry the migrants around various properties for the gang, being paid hundreds of pounds a time for the trips.
The pair would also transport cannabis or equipment for the farms.
A sixth member of the gang, Amjad Nawaz, 44, from Birmingham, acted as a middleman and was found to be in regular conversations with Nguyen about workers, the buying and selling of cannabis, and arranging for properties to be used in Birmingham.
Their trial heard from a victim of trafficking, named only as ‘Witness Z’, a Vietnamese national who was exploited by the gang after arriving in the UK by a small boat in November 2020.
Witness Z says he was forced to work in a number of cannabis growing farms, saying he had no choice as he was in debt bondage to the criminal gang that had transported him to the UK.
In June 2021, he was arrested after officers from the Cleveland Police raided a farm at a house in Hartlepool.
Inside the property, officers found a note pinned to a bedroom door saying “take what you want, please don’t hit me, I do not know English”, and a handwritten diary extract from a migrant in which they ask “why did I get beaten up and forced to work?”
Throughout the course of the NCA investigation, cannabis farms linked to the network were uncovered in Tipton, Coventry and Edgbaston in the West Midlands, Derby, Hartlepool, East Ham in London and Gatley in Cheshire. Harvested cannabis was recovered from a further property in Hall Green, Birmingham.
David Zaki Qayumi. (Image: NCA)
Mai Van Nguyen. (Image: NCA)
Nguyen and Tran both pleaded guilty to conspiring to produce cannabis, but the others denied the charge. All six denied charges of trafficking for exploitation, but on Monday, February 24, following a seven-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, all six men were found guilty of all charges.
Now, Nguyen has been jailed for 15 years, Dinh for 14 years, Tran for 11-and-a-half years, and Nawaz for 12 years, while Hussain and Akhtar were handed 10 and 10-and-a-half years behind bars terms, respectively.
Meanwhile, in a separate hearing at the same court, two men who helped a drug kingpin make millions running a string of cannabis farms across Britain whilst also exploiting illegal migrants into forced labour were jailed.
Roman Le, 37, swanned around the country in a luxury Bentley Continental, posing as a property developer surveying his empire of residential and commercial properties, even putting up scaffolding around the buildings to make it look like work was taking place.
But behind the facade, his illegal lieutenants were busy inside the properties manufacturing huge quantities of cannabis that was being sold for millions on UK streets.
Vietnamese-born Le ran at least eight cannabis farms in residential and commercial properties, as well as a storage facility housing both equipment and harvested cannabis.
