Bradford’s top judge is demanding answers as to why “trafficked” Albanian men caught tending cannabis farms in the city can suddenly afford private legal representation.

The city’s Recorder, Judge Richard Mansell QC, has publicly aired his concerns that organised criminal gangs (OCGs) may be behind a series of moves to switch legal representation from local law firms to those based in London and Birmingham.

Judge Mansell spoke out after refusing an application to revoke a teenage Albanian national’s representation order.

Egzon Kortoci, 19, is in custody in HMP Doncaster, South Yorkshire, awaiting trial in April accused of producing cannabis in Bradford on July 1.

Kortoci, of Ascot Parade, Horton Bank Top, Bradford, is pursuing a defence that he was illegally trafficked to the United Kingdom and made to work for a criminal gang.

Judge Mansell was told that family and community members in Albania, southeast Europe, had rallied round to pay for the private legal representation.

But he queried how it could be that Kortoci and others in a similar position, who had been trafficked into the country in the back of a lorry to make a better life for themselves, could suddenly afford to pay expensive legal bills.

“There’s something very, very troubling about this,” he said.

The men claimed to have been exploited by organised criminals but then applied to have their Legal Aid revoked on the premise that they had money back home to fund their own defences.

“Either they have money extorted from them or it’s coming from the criminal gangs themselves,” Judge Mansell said.

He warned that his concerns were not going away.

“I am referring several cases for a look into what’s going on here,” he said.

He agreed to extend the custody time limits until the third day of the trial.

After the case, Shipley MP, Philip Davies, echoed the Recorder’s call for an investigation into the activities of trafficking gangs bringing Albanian men illegally into the country to work in cannabis factories.

There have recently been a string of police raids on houses, mills and warehouses in Bradford where sophisticated drugs farms have been set up and Albanian nationals arrested and held in prison on remand.

Mr Davies told the Telegraph & Argus: “I very much share the concerns of the judge and I am pleased that he has raised this issue.”

The Tory MP said: “These criminal gangs involved in trafficking are disgusting, and it is big business for them.

“Much more needs to be done to clamp down on the revolting practice of trafficking which is the modern day version of slavery, and relieve these criminal gangs of the proceeds of their crimes.”

Earlier this year, a national newspaper investigation claimed that Albanian drug lords were trafficking vulnerable people, including children, into Britain where they’re forced into slavery in the UK drugs market.

It claimed that some are smuggled here on lorries, many secure fake passports and come in by car or ferry.