In December 2020, at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced nine other individuals who had been implicated in the offences to which Draghici pleaded guilty. Draghici had fled and could not be found but, unexpectedly, he was arrested in Romania in September 2022 and extradited a month later. In June 2023, he pleaded guilty to the offences and was sentenced in July 2023.

HH Garnham, J, said "On 11 October 2019 you became involved in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants to the
UK in the back of lorries, that was plainly a deliberate and intentional breach of UK border control. You were recruited by a man called Nica and became part of an organised crime group which was making astonishing profits out of the exploitation of people desperate to get to the UK. I was told in the week or two you were
involved the fees charged to these migrants would probably have totalled in excess of GBP600,000."

Migrants would assemble in a safe house in a city in France. From there they would be taken by taxis to a remote location where they were loaded into the trailers of lorries. Those trailers were then transported, normally unaccompanied, on ferries to the United Kingdom. The trailers were collected and driven to Collingwood Farm; a remote location in Orsett, Essex. I will refer to Collingwood Farm hereafter as “the Farm”. There, the migrants were unloaded, transferred to smaller vehicles and driven to a safe house elsewhere in the UK where they would be held until the fee for their transportation was paid. The fee was around £10,000 per person, rising to as much as GBP13,000 for what was astonishingly called “a VIP ticket” in which case the driver would be aware of the smuggled migrants."

You were involved in three incidents of people smuggling. These occurred on 11th, 18th and 23rd October 2019. On the 11th you were amongst a group of conspirators who met a cab and trailer that had travelled form Zeebrugge to the Farm carrying 15- 20 migrants. On the 18th you were in a convoy of cars that met a trailer which had been driven from Purfleet docks at the Farm. That vehicle was carrying an unknown
number of migrants.

And most importantly, on the 22-23 October 2019 you were involved in smuggling 39 Vietnamese migrants into the UK in a sealed trailer. By arrangement, the 39 would-be migrants travelled to a remote location in Bierne Northern France, where a man named Harrison and his lorry were waiting for them. By 10.00 a.m. on the 23rd they had been loaded and Harrison began his journey to Zeebrugge. From that time on, and throughout the course of 22 October the temperature in the trailers began to rise.

There is no need to repeat here how and why the 39 people died: it is set out in detail in the judgment.

Sentence

39 concurrent sentences of 12 years and seven months. A shorter sentence, also concurrent, was imposed for the immigration offence.

A proceeds of crime procedure was begun.

It is not at this stage clear whether the owner of Collingwood Farm was involved and whether a proceeds of crime procedure has been applied to that property. Although it is listed as being in Orsett, it's south of the A13 in an area which is far less salubrious than the village proper.

The full judgment is here: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/R-v-Draghici.pdf