A slavemaster who forced migrants to scavenge from bins to survive has walked free from court.
Monika Daducova, 44, and her partner Zdenek Drevenak, 48 along with Jiri Cernohous, 49 and Martin Slovjak, 47, stole their victims’ wages and kept them in ‘invisible handcuffs’, Southwark Crown Court heard.
The migrants, 11 Czechs and one Slovakian, were forced to work in various places, while one was made to work as a prostitute and shot in the leg.
Judge Martin Griffiths jailed ringleader Drevenak for 13 years, Cernohous for nine years and Slovjak for four years last year.
But Daducova has avoided jail because she has already served over 954 days on curfew, and was instead handed an 18-month community order.
The migrants had been promised a better quality of life on arrival in the UK but their passports and identity documents were soon taken away and locked in a safe when they arrived at their new home in Enfield, north London.
Some were made to work at Arnaouti Pitta Bread Bakery in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, where they earned the slavemasters £400,000 a year, while others were posted at car washes and a branch of McDonald’s in Caxton, Cambridgeshire.
They were also forced into doing household chores when they returned home each night.
Monika Daducova, pictured, a slavemaster who forced migrants to scavenge from bins to survive, has walked free from court
The migrants, 11 Czechs and one Slovakian, were forced to work in various places and housed in a property in Enfield, north London, which police searched last year
Detectives from the Met Police stormed the property and found the victims living in horrid conditions
Drevenak, Daducova, Cernohous and Slovjak all denied but were variously convicted by a jury of a range of charges including conspiracy to hold a person in servitude and trafficking a person for exploitation, after a three-month trial.
Drevenak started trafficking vulnerable people to the UK from the Czech Republic in 2015 with his brother Ernest, 45, while they lavished the profits on luxury cars and gold jewellery.
Ernest, from Bedford, was jailed for 12 years while Veronika Bubencikova, 45, was sentenced to 10 years following an earlier trial at Cambridge Crown Court.
Sentencing Daducova, Judge Griffiths said: ‘They were fed by you. Other than that they had no independence or freedom.
‘The workers were given very small change from their wages together with some tobacco to keep them modified.
‘They were charged excessive amounts for accommodation and food. The workers complained of various things that were done to them to keep them in line. Sometimes violence, sometimes threats.
‘The strongest evidence of the nature of their lives in England was that so many of them ran when the opportunity presented itself.
‘You were the one who had their passports in a safe in the bedroom.’
Zdenek Drevenak, pictured, along with Jiri Cernohous and Martin Slovjak also stole their victims’ wages and kept them in ‘invisible handcuffs’
Drevenak started trafficking vulnerable people to the UK from the Czech Republic in 2015 with his brother Ernest, pictured left
Daducova’s 18-month community order will require her to complete 100 days of unpaid work and 30 days of a rehabilitation requirement.
She was also issued with a five-year slavery and trafficking prevention order.
Earlier Arlette Piercy, representing Daducova, said in mitigation: ‘All the complainants spoke highly of the food that they were given. They spoke highly of Monika and said that she was kind to them.
‘[Daducova] was constantly cooking, shopping and washing as well.
‘As her bank account shows, she was not living a lavish lifestyle. She did not have a wardrobe full of designer clothes. She was shopping at Lidl and Tesco.
‘She was taking her boys to the local kebab shop and buying their clothes from Sports Direct.’
Ms Piercy added: ‘Eighty percent of Roma families live in poverty. There is a high level of domestic violence and a serious mistrust of authority
‘Many of the complainants were from the Roma community as well.’
Veronika Bubencikova was sentenced to ten and a half years behind bars for her role last year
The two brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak were convicted of leading the slavery gang
A gang forced 16 human trafficking victims to work at a McDonald’s branch and a bread factory, including two (pictured) who waived their anonymity
During the trial Benjamin Temple, prosecuting, said: ‘The Crown’s case is that they employed a range of methods of control, physical and not physical, subtle and not subtle.
‘The victims worked at the bakery for a total of 144 months, so 12 years work at the bakery.’
Mr Temple said the gang made sure their victims ‘remained economically and physically trapped’.
He told the court that one of the complainants had been given a job at the bakery, but she lost it, and was told to work as a prostitute.
‘When she refused she was beaten with a television cable by Drevenak,’ he added. ‘By use and threat of violence, she was forced to work in prostitution for two years.’
Mr Temple told the court the woman was shot by Zdenek Drevenak in 2012 and the pellet is still in her leg.
He added that Drevenak was ‘not the first defendant by accident’.
Mr Temple said: ‘Cernohous was his right hand man, his lieutenant. He was simply making sure that the conspiracy continued to operate.’
Cameras captured the moment police raided a home in London where nine people were living in cold and cramped conditions after being brought to the UK to work in ‘slave conditions’
The gang ‘treated their victims like livestock’ feeding them just enough ‘to keep them going’, according to the Met’s Det Insp Melanie Lillywhite
The victims spent their days living in cramped accommodation while gang leaders lived a life of luxury
Referring to victim impact statements, he said that one of the victims ‘lived on the street for a month and a half, and was eating from rubbish bins.’
The woman who was shot said in her impact statement: ‘When the weather changes my whole leg hurts.
‘It is very stressful for me. I have to go to the doctor a lot and that stresses me.’
Another victim said: ‘I turned to alcohol for comfort and support. Alcohol helped numb the pain and got me through the day.
‘The period of rehab was very difficult for me.’
Last September, footage showed the moment police save the McDonald’s slaves from their cramped London home where they were left shivering in their beds.
It saw one of the ringleaders enjoying a beach holiday abroad – before justice finally caught up with him and his accomplices.
BBC reporter Jon Ironmonger, describing the police raid of the home in October 2019, said: ‘Suffering mentally and physically, victims of slavery are found shivering in their beds.’
Nine of the victims were put to work at a branch of McDonald’s in Caxton, Cambridgeshire
One officer is heard saying: ‘There’s no insulation or anything – you’ve got to feel for them, don’t you?’
Det Insp Melanie Lillywhite, from the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘We knew that the house was housing a lot of victims.
‘We weren’t clear exactly how many we might find when we got in there, so we needed to be fully prepared.
‘This case was quite shocking for the officers involved.’
