The National Police, together with the French and Italian Police and the Dominican Republic Prosecutor's Office, have dismantled an organization of pimps and released 41 sexually exploited victims of trafficking in numerous dating floors in France through two 'call centers' , one in the Girona town of Figueras and another in the Italian municipality of Rho.
This was confirmed this Friday by the National Police in a press release collected by Servimedia, which points out that those involved transferred the victims every few days to different cities, which prevented them from establishing links and made it difficult to detect criminal activity. The clients believed that they were talking to the victims, when it was the members of the criminal network themselves who managed and decided on the conditions of the sexual services.
In this way, they have arrested ten people -three in Figueras, four in France, one in Italy and two in the Dominican Republic- for the crimes of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation, belonging to a criminal organization, crimes related to prostitution and money laundering.
In the operation, twenty entries and searches have been registered, three in the Girona town of Figueras, fourteen in France, two in Italy and one in the Dominican Republic, in which two high-end vehicles have been intervened, more than 70,000 euros in cash, more than 100 mobile phones, jewelry, watches and documentation related to the investigation.
The framework had two logistics bases as a 'call center' in the Girona town of Figueras and in the Italian municipality of Rho. From these headquarters, the agents detail, "the members of the organization published the sexual announcements, managed the calls from the clients, established the sexual appointments, the reservations of the train tickets for the displacements of the victims, the apartments in which the exploitation and accounting of the illegal activity was exercised”.
“The main managers of the criminal network later established a third logistics headquarters, located in the Dominican Republic, from where they managed prostitution advertisements on web pages, customer calls and the displacement of victims to new cities, which was performed every few days following the model known as 'sex-tour'”, they point out.
The National Police explained that this system "is based on a form of tourism with the purpose of having sexual relations with people who practice prostitution" and qualified that "the frequency of these trips prevented the victims from establishing links in the cities to which that were transferred and also made it difficult to detect criminal activity.”
"The clients believed that during the calls they spoke with the victims, but in reality they were managed from the 'call center' and those involved did not give their victims a choice about the sexual service they should offer and under what conditions," he stressed. The members of the criminal network "collected the money they obtained from the victims through the exercise of prostitution and traveled to France to collect the cash", although "the payment was also made by transfer and from France it was remitted to the Dominican Republic ”.
The operation began by discovering advertisements for sexual services on French websites managed from Spain. The organization had people involved in France who provided rooms for the exploitation of the victims. The owners of the properties where they were transferred knew that prostitution was practiced there and even participated in advertising sexual services.
