Convicted child trafficker Peace Sandberg arrives at an employment tribunal in London yesterday, despite being banned from the UK.
The ease with which illegal immigrants can enter the country was highlighted yesterday when a baby trafficker banned from the UK for ten years sneaked back in to claim thousands at an employment tribunal.
Peace Sandberg, 42, was jailed for 26 months in 2008 after she bought a three-month-old baby in Nigeria for £150 and tried to pass it off as her own to get a council house.
After she had served her sentence she was deported to Sweden where she holds joint Swedish/Nigerian citizenship, and was ordered not to return to Britain for ten years.
Defying the ban, Mrs Sandberg, a former housing officer who worked with the elderly in Ealing, London, flew back to the country and walked straight through immigration checks at Heathrow Airport.
She returned to Britain to sue her former employers, the Peabody Trust, for race and sex discrimination.
The employment tribunal allowed the case to proceed knowing she was in the country illegally.
Mrs Sandberg was caught eventually after the lawyer representing the trust raised alarms.
‘The claimant has committed a crime by coming into the UK,’ Mark Leach told the judge. ‘She clearly knows what the situation is. The police are on their way.’
Mrs Sandberg replied: ‘The Home Office is at the airport and they allowed me to enter. I came to Heathrow with my passport and they let me in.’
Three officers arrived at the tribunal in the early afternoon.
After discovering the hearing was listed for seven days, one officer said: ‘We should probably nick her now. We can't justify letting her stay here.’
Police later arrested Mrs Sandberg, who was taken away in handcuffs. She will be deported to Sweden in a few days. The tribunal was adjourned.
Mrs Sandberg was arrested in 2008 after lying to officials to get a visa for a child she bought from Nigeria, and then returning home demanding a council house and benefits from Ealing Council.
Her scam fell apart because council workers remembered she was not pregnant when she visited the offices less than two months earlier.
A jury took less than 40 minutes to find her guilty of trafficking the child into Britain.
She is suing for sex discrimination, claiming the Peabody Trust refused to install a kitchen or toilet in her office when she was employed in 2007.
Mrs Sandberg said they preferred to employ men because they could use facilities in a nearby pub.
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