Agents of the National Police together with the French and Italian Police and the Dominican Republic Prosecutor’s Office have carried out a joint investigation in which they have dismantled an organization of pimps and released 41 victims exploited on numerous dating floors in France, using to two call centers in Spain and Italy.
As reported by the Police, ten people have been arrested, three of them in Figueras and the rest in France (4), Italy (1) and the Dominican Republic (2) 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.
Those involved moved 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.
The framework had two logistics bases as call centers in the Girona town of Figueras and in the Italian municipality of Rho. From these headquarters, the members of the organization published the sexual advertisements, managed the calls from the clients, established the sexual appointments, the reservations of the train tickets for the movements of the victims, the apartments in which the exploitation was carried out and accounting for illegal activity.
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 movement of victims to new cities, which was carried out every few days following the model known as “sex-tour” or sexual tourism.
There have been 20 entries and searches, three in the Girona town of Figueras, 14 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, plus than 100 mobile phones, jewelry, watches and documentation related to the investigation.
