Police Scotland arrested 36 people and shut down 14 cannabis farms in its largest-ever coordinated human trafficking operation, targeting a suspected Vietnamese organised crime group across Scotland - UKJNews

Around 300 officers raided or checked 47 properties from 7am on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Dundee, Aberdeen, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Fife, Midlothian and the Scottish Borders. Additional arrests were made in Birmingham. The operation, codenamed Kendrew, also recovered a number of potential trafficking victims forced to work on the farms.

 

Footage circulated by the Daily Record shows officers using battering rams and cutting tools to enter properties, including tenements and commercial premises, as part of the dawn raids. Journalists accompanied police to sites in Falkirk and Edinburgh, where officers found evidence of recent cannabis cultivation and plants growing in hallways and cupboards. One Edinburgh tenement on South Clerk Street, close to a busy police station, contained rooms packed with plants behind tarpaulin under bright lights. 

 

 

 

Police say the group is involved in “poly-criminality”: human trafficking and labour exploitation, large-scale cannabis production generating millions of pounds a year, fraud, money laundering and organised immigration crime, including people smuggling. Most of the farms rely on forced labour or people trafficked from Vietnam. Last year Vietnamese-linked cultivations accounted for a large share of about 150 cannabis farms found in Scotland, with drugs worth £26 million seized and around 120 “gardeners” arrested. Inquiries then linked a single group to roughly a third of those sites.

 

Detective Superintendent Stevie Bertram, head of Police Scotland’s National Human Trafficking Unit, described it as the force’s biggest human trafficking investigation. “We wanted to disrupt and absolutely cripple that organisation,” he said. “We wanted to do it all in one day and I think it’s been a huge success. Essentially, they won’t be able to function. All of the targets of this operation have been arrested and they are the ones we believe are running that operation.” Nineteen arrests were in Glasgow, 11 in Edinburgh, five in Aberdeen and three in Dundee. Thirteen of those arrested were due in court.

 

 

The raids follow Daily Record reporting earlier in September that Police Scotland had received 342 referrals since 2020 involving Vietnamese children kept in slavery in Scotland, including 31 cases of sexual exploitation, often in flats or “pop-up” brothels. Victims have also been forced into nail bars, car washes, hospitality and domestic work. Vietnamese nationals remain among the most commonly identified exploited groups in Scotland. 

 

Partners included the National Crime Agency, Home Office Immigration Enforcement, HMRC and policing counterparts in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. Officers served 35 warrants. Specialist victim support, including Justice & Care Victim Navigators, assisted those recovered. Police continue to examine phones, data and paperwork to distinguish organisers from potential victims and have urged the public to report suspicions of trafficking. Electricity suppliers were contacted to disconnect illegal connections at grow sites, which also pose fire risks to neighbouring properties. 

 

Bertram said investigations would continue and that the group operates across the UK and internationally. “Human trafficking is the illegal trade in human beings for the purpose of commercial exploitation, and it has no place in Scotland,” he said. “We will target criminals who abuse, control, and exploit people.”