It is the town that Europe’s biggest human trafficking ring calls home - or so say British and Romanian police forces, who have spent nearly a decade trying to bring them to justice.

Garish, multi-storey properties with grand statues and polished gates line the streets of Tandarei in southern Romania, while on the other side of town, horse-drawn carts trundle along potholed roads.

The Tony Soprano-style properties were allegedly built using UK benefits payments and the spoils from trafficking hundreds of children to British cities, where they were forced into begging and prostitution.

In 2010, a UK-Romania taskforce overseen by the EU, Operation Golf, raided the Tandarei mansions of 26 alleged trafficking ringleaders and enforcers, then threw them in prison to await their trials.

Video footage of those raids shows AK-47s and piles of bank notes being discovered at the properties - alongside a chair with ankle and wrist straps to torture victims who did not cooperate.

But in February, the case against the so-called Tandarei mafia collapsed, while rumours swirled of pay-offs, witness intimidation and corrupt investigators.

Now, the Telegraph has tracked down one of the alleged ringleaders, who in an extraordinary interview dared European police forces to find any evidence that would link him to the brutal trafficking industry.