A court in Finland has sentenced a local businessman to two and a half years in prison for trafficking dozens of Thai workers to pick berries in the Nordic country.

Jukka Kristo, the former chief executive of the berry company Polarica, was convicted on 78 counts of human trafficking, the Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported.

His Thai business associate, Kalyakorn Phongphit, was convicted of the same offences but sentenced to only nine months in prison, as she had already been given a three-year sentence last year in a trafficking case involving another berry firm.

The court also ordered Kristo, Kalyakorn and Polarica to pay the victims 500,000 euros (19 million baht) in compensation for suffering and financial loss. As well, Polarica was fined 150,000 euros.

The court banned Kristo from conducting business for a period of five years, and ordered him to lose his military rank.

The treatment of Thai workers in Finland led Bangkok to stop pickers from travelling to the country pending the renegotiation of terms with Helsinki.

Prosecutors said the two defendants subjected Thai berry pickers to forced labour and other degrading conditions in Finland in 2022, when a record number of 4,000 pickers arrived in the country to work.

The degrading conditions included substandard accommodation that sometimes lacked shower facilities. Meals often consisted of boiled chicken legs, salmon heads and raw liver.

Staff collected the pickers’ passports and return flight tickets upon their arrival in Finland. 

Prosecutors had demanded that Kristo and Kalyakorn each serve five-year prison sentences.