2018: A Watershed Moment for the GLAA

As we continue to mark 20 years of the GLAA we look back at another of our key cases – Operation Brewer.

Operation Brewer was a watershed moment for the organisation. Not only did it mark the first operation since we gained new powers in 2017 under the Modern Slavery Act and we became the GLAA but it was also the first case to utilise in-house digital forensics.

A Romanian couple and their accomplices exploited 41 vulnerable workers in the Merseyside area. The workers were recruited from Romania with the promise of employment and accommodation. But once they were in the UK ringleader Alexander Goran controlled their wages, made them live in cramped, sub-standard housing and gave some of them false identities so that they could work two separate shifts at a food processing factory.

The exploiters were arrested and questioned following a multi-agency operation in March 2018 and the victims were removed and safe guarded. 

The work then began to gather evidence from mobile phones and the GLAA’s new digital capabilities were employed.

The evidence gathered using these new capabilities provided critical evidence for the case and helped to secure convictions against the Romanian couple, Alexander and Ana Marie Goran and their accomplices, Josh Beesley and Christopher Beech.

After the Goran’s were arrested and questioned they left the UK but were arrested by Spanish authorities in Valencia in 2019 after a European Arrest Warrant was issued.

They appeared before Liverpool Crown Court in December 2019 and Alexander Goran was jailed for three-and-a-half years for acting as an unlicensed gangmaster and conspiring to commit fraud by abuse of position. Ana Marie Goran admitted an offence of aiding and abetting an unlicensed gangmaster and was jailed for 15 months.

These convictions followed sentences handed out to their accomplices Josh Beesley and Christopher Beech in July of the same year.

Beesley was jailed for 20 months for aiding and abetting an unlicensed gangmaster and conspiring to commit fraud by abuse of position.

Beech was handed an eight-month sentence suspended for 18 months and a community order for the same gangmaster offence.