{"id":102482,"date":"2026-06-08T08:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T08:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/102482\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T08:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T08:56:14","slug":"former-berry-company-chief-convicted-in-human-trafficking-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/102482\/","title":{"rendered":"Former berry company chief convicted in human trafficking case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0Lapland District Court\u00a0has sentenced the former head of a berry procurement company to prison after finding that dozens of Thai berry pickers recruited to work in Finland were victims of human trafficking. The ruling, delivered on Monday, concludes one of the largest human trafficking cases ever heard in Finland.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The court sentenced Jukka Kristo, former chief executive of Polarica Marjahankinta, to two years and six months in prison for human trafficking offences involving 78 Thai berry pickers who travelled to Finland during the 2022 harvesting season.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t &#13;<\/p>\n<p>His Thai business associate, Kalyakorn &#8220;Durian&#8221; Phongphit, received a nine-month prison sentence.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The court found both men guilty of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.helsinkitimes.fi\/finland\/finland-news\/domestic\/27726-finland-s-largest-human-trafficking-trial-opens-in-rovaniemi.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">78 counts of human trafficking<\/a>. The victims in the case were all Thai nationals recruited to pick wild berries across several locations in Finland.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>According to the prosecution, the workers were lured to Finland with misleading information about earnings, living conditions and expenses before being subjected to forced labour and conditions that violated human dignity.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors argued that recruiters provided overly optimistic estimates of income and failed to accurately describe the costs that workers would face after arriving in Finland.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The indictment also alleged that accommodation camps used during the berry-picking season were unsuitable and that workers were sometimes served food that was raw, spoiled or otherwise unfit to eat.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Both defendants denied the charges throughout the proceedings.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the prison sentence, Kristo was banned from conducting business activities for five years.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>According to Finnish Broadcaster <a href=\"https:\/\/yle.fi\/a\/74-20230308\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Yle<\/a>, the court also ordered him to forfeit his military rank.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The court imposed a corporate fine of \u20ac150,000 on Polarica Marjahankinta.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Kristo, Phongphit and the company were further ordered to pay approximately \u20ac400,000 towards the legal costs of the victims&#8217; representatives and roughly \u20ac500,000 in compensation to the victims for financial losses and emotional suffering, plus interest.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>The sentence handed to Phongphit was reduced because of a previous conviction handed down by the same court in September 2025. In that case, she received a prison sentence of three years for 62 aggravated human trafficking offences.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Monday&#8217;s verdict and the earlier conviction are not yet final and may be appealed.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>HT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Lapland District Court\u00a0has sentenced the former head of a berry procurement company to prison after finding that dozens&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[87],"tags":[52443,158,38679,18865,113,11233,52440,52444,19205,52442,48804,52441],"class_list":["post-102482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-helsinki","tag-berry-industry","tag-finland","tag-finland-court","tag-finland-news","tag-helsinki","tag-human-trafficking","tag-jukka-kristo","tag-kalyakorn-phongphit","tag-labour-exploitation","tag-lapland-district-court","tag-polarica","tag-thailand-berry-pickers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116713657876317717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}