Restaurant boss jailed over people trafficking
A RESTAURANT boss played a key role in a ‘barbaric’ failed plot to traffic illegal immigrants into the UK to work in cannabis farms.
Tuan Do, 55, was also involved in the running of cannabis farms which produced tens of thousands of pounds worth of the drug.
He has now been jailed for 11 years. Minshull Street Crown Court heard that conspirators in the plot to smuggle people into the UK unwittingly recruited an undercover police officer as a driver.
Prosecutors said Do, from Cheetham Hill, who previously ran the New Saigon restaurant in Blackburn, was an ‘organisational mind’ in the scheme motivated by cash.
He provided a ‘critical link’ between those involved in the trafficking in the UK and the people set to be trafficked
from Europe. Others involved have previously been jailed for their roles.
Officers from the National Crime Agency also investigated Do for his involvement in cannabis farms on a ‘commercial’ scale.
At an address in Exchange Street, Accrington, police found 226 cannabis plants which on the streets could have been worth about £126,000.
A search of a property at Ellenhall
Close in Harpurhey found cannabis with a potential street value of £27,000.
While at an address in Kearsley, Bolton, police discovered a farm with cannabis potentially worth £107,000 on the streets.
A man called Mark Vella, 57, held the lease to that property, who said he allowed it to be used to cultivate cannabis. He took a ‘gardener’ to tend to the farm but wasn’t involved himself, his lawyer said. At a sentencing hearing, Do was jailed for 11 years while Vella was handed a 23-month prison sentence suspended for two years.
Do, of Modbury Walk, Cheetham Hill, was found guilty after trial of conspiracy to assist in unlawful immigration, conspiracy to produce a class B drug and conspiracy to supply a class B drug. He pleaded guilty to another count of conspiracy to produce a class B drug. Vella pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce a class B drug.
Sentencing Do at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Elizabeth Nicholls said: “These types of offences are barbaric and inhumane and those who participate have no regard for the life of those trafficked and regard them as objects to transport for their own financial gain.”
Do must serve two thirds of his sentence. Vella, of Sandringham Road, Worsley, was also made the subject of a three-month electronically monitored curfew.