The Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) has revoked the licence of a Bulgarian gangmaster for bringing in workers to the UK on a bogus posted workers scheme and then taking a huge cut of the workers’wages for himself.

Kostadin Todorov of Todorov and Co based in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, was unsuccessful in his appeal to overturn the GLA ruling and will face prosecution if he attempts to provide further workers without a licence.

Bulgarian national workers had been supplied to fruit farms in the Arbroath, Angus and Cambridgeshire regions. The workers had to pay 16% of their salary to Todorov (as well as Todorov making a weekly charge to the farmers he supplied his workers to), with no reason given for why this needed to be paid. Workers were also often paid late and some did not receive payslips and holiday pay.

Todorov maintained the workers had been correctly ‘posted’to the UK to work but the GLA investigation found that the applications for Todorov’s workers to be ‘posted’to the UK had been turned down by Bulgarian authorities as the way the workers would be supplied did not meet the requirements for the Posted Workers Scheme.

As well as ‘exploiting’his workers, Todorov’s actions caused concern and hardship to the UK farmers who entered into contracts with him as they were faced with large National Insurance demands associated to workers wages unpaid by Todorov.

Most workers had not been given a copy of their contract, with some being asked to sign blank documents on a bus before leaving Bulgaria.

Paul Whitehouse, chairman of the GLA, said: “I have sympathy for the workers who took the job in good faith, but none for Todorov. His actions have harmed the workers and also brought financial penalties on the farms that he supplied.”