Trafficking investigation
Police have a duty to investigate trafficking, even in historical cases. Identifying the crime as trafficking matters because only a trafficking investigation can gather the evidence of the system of exploitation – and achieve meaningful criminal accountability.
Why a trafficking investigation matters
When the Metropolitan Police opened an investigation into the enablers of Mohamed Al Fayed's offending in 2024, they faced a choice about how to approach the case. The primary perpetrator was gone. But hundreds of women said they had been exploited, abused and silenced over four decades. The question was: what exactly are the police investigating, and under which legal framework?
A sexual offences investigation asks: who committed or assisted specific acts of rape or assault?
A trafficking investigation asks: who built, ran and funded a system designed to exploit women?
The Met has been investigating primarily under what is called the RASSO framework — the unit that handles rape and serious sexual offences. This page explains why the choice of framework matters — and why a formal trafficking investigation remains the approach most likely to deliver the criminal accountability survivors, lawyers and independent experts have consistently sought.
Note: This analysis discusses legal frameworks, official guidance, and publicly reported facts. It does not name individuals or entities who have not been charged with any offence, does not make findings of guilt, and is not intended to prejudice any ongoing proceedings. All references to potential criminal liability are framed as legal analysis of what relevant frameworks make possible, not as allegations against specific individuals or entities.
Naming the crime
The Fayed operation, as described by survivors and documented in court proceedings, was not simply one man committing assaults. It involved women and girls being recruited through job advertisements, subjected to medical examinations before they started work, required to sign non-disclosure agreements, transported between properties in the UK and abroad, and in some cases having their documents confiscated and movements monitored.
That pattern — consistently described across multiple survivors — maps onto the legal definition of trafficking under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which criminalise the recruitment, movement and harbouring of people for the purpose of exploitation.
College of Policing guidance states that every report of modern slavery must be investigated from the point of disclosure or suspicion, and that suspected modern slavery offences must be treated as a serious crime even when potential victims may not immediately identify themselves as such.
Historical trafficking must be investigated
Much of the abuse in the Fayed case took place before the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and some of it before the Sexual Offences Act 2003 created specific trafficking offences. That does not put it beyond the reach of a trafficking investigation. In R v Plakici (2004), a man who brought young women from Eastern Europe to Britain for sexual exploitation between 2000 and 2002 was prosecuted under the immigration, kidnapping and prostitution laws in force at the time. The Court of Appeal more than doubled his sentence and recognised the gravity of trafficking even though no dedicated offence covered his conduct. The duty to investigate does not depend on a particular statute either. Under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the state must investigate credible allegations of trafficking. The European Court of Human Rights confirmed this in Rantsev v Cyprus and Russia, and in C.N. v United Kingdom it found the UK in breach precisely because the absence of a specific offence had led police to treat a case of servitude as something lesser. Investigating the Fayed case as trafficking is not about choosing a label. It decides what evidence is gathered, which patterns are recognised and who is examined.
The argument that “the law wasn’t available” also misunderstands what prosecutors can do. The rape and serious sexual offences committed by Fayed and other perpetrators are only one part of the offending. Trafficking is a system, and the people who recruited, transported, housed, paid, monitored, silenced and covered for victims may have committed serious crimes in their own right. Depending on the evidence, these could include conspiracy, aiding and abetting, false imprisonment, kidnapping, controlling prostitution for gain, money laundering, intimidating witnesses, perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office. An investigation confined to one dead suspect’s sexual offences will never reach them. An investigation that treats the case as trafficking can follow the money, the logistics and the concealment to everyone who made the abuse possible.
Investigating a System of Exploitation
The Fayed system was not one man acting alone with a handful of enablers. It was an organisation that systematically exploited hundreds of women and children. If the Met fails to investigate the system, it gives other perpetrators, co-conspirators and institutions a free pass for trafficking.
Click to enlarge
Financial investigation
College of Policing guidance specifically requires investigators to pursue financial strategies in trafficking cases. Financial investigations are also specified in guidance from the Council of Europe and IASC.
In a trafficking investigation, financial flows are primary evidence — not just supporting material. The cost of running a recruitment pipeline, the legal fees for administering non-disclosure agreements, payroll records, corporate account data and the structures used to move money between entities are all potentially relevant to establishing who funded and directed the operation.
Under a sexual offences investigation, these financial flows are background context. They may support an argument that a facilitator knew what was happening, but they are not themselves a primary route to liability. This distinction materially affects the scope and depth of investigation that is legally required and operationally pursued.
The Fayed operation left a financial footprint: bank records, store cards, company accounts, payroll. Because this trafficking case was processed through formal company accounts, this evidence should be available to investigators. Why is it being excluded from Operation Cornpoppy?
Securing the evidence
Securing the documentary evidence of trafficking is vital in a trafficking case. NOA is concerned the Met's Cornpoppy investigation is focused on victim interviews alone – which is not best practice for trafficking investigations. We have written to the Met to raise concerns that evidence in civil litigation could be shared prematurely with parties that may have witnessed or even be implicated in conduct relevant to the criminal investigation. But our concerns were dismissed. This is why we call for NCA supervision and parliamentary scrutiny of the investigation.
Trafficking and the law
Under UK and international law, the Government and police must recognise individuals as potential victims of human trafficking where there are credible indicators of exploitation or control, regardless of whether a perpetrator is identifiable or prosecutable. Once such indicators are present, the duty to investigate is triggered and must be proactive and effective.
Trafficking investigations are required to go beyond individual suspects and examine wider networks, including recruitment pathways, patterns of abuse, premises, financial activity, and any institutional or regulatory failures that may have enabled the exploitation.
Failure to recognise victim status or to pursue these wider lines of inquiry may place the State in breach of its positive obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, and its domestic statutory duties under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, including the obligation to identify, protect, and support victims of slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour, and human trafficking. Such failures may also engage the State’s duties under the Human Rights Act 1998 and relevant safeguarding and investigative obligations arising under UK public law.