Couple charged with human trafficking with berry pickers

Published 3 May 2024 at 17.13

Domestic. The prosecutor has today charged a man and a woman with nine cases of human trafficking. The couple are representatives of and owners of a Swedish berry picking company.

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According to the indictment, the couple has recruited berry pickers from Thailand who, instead of working with good working conditions, have become dependent to the couple and became indebted from the start.

– I mean that the man and the woman have promised the berry pickers work with pay and working conditions in accordance with the Swedish collective agreement. In fact, the berry pickers have been stripped of their passports upon arrival in Sweden, have been in debt of over 20,000 kroner each for the journey here and have been dependent on the couple in relation to food and housing, says senior prosecutor Petra Götell, who leads the preliminary investigation.

< p>A total of around 150 berry pickers came to Sweden, nine of whom stayed behind and told the police what they had been involved in.

The crime period is March 1 to September 27, 2023. When the berry pickers raised the alarm about the conditions, they were arrested and the couple was arrested.

– They have misled the berry pickers, who were in a difficult situation. I believe that it is a matter of human trafficking, alternatively human exploitation, serious crime. The crime concerned an activity that was conducted on a large scale and resulted in significant profit, says Petra Götell.