WATCH: Police arrest 34 from eastern European gang ‘seeking total control of prostitution’ between Marbella and Torremolinos

A CRIMINAL gang seeking full control of prostitution on Malaga’s coastline has been dismantled by Spanish cops.

The operation led to the arrest of 34 members of the Bulgarian gang in Puerto Banus yesterday.

Some 13 victims who were being forced into sex work were released.

The gang, which operated in Bulgaria and Spain, was busted after a joint operation between the Policia Nacional and Bulgarian police through Europol and Eurojust.

Authorities said the group has been ‘totally dismantled’ after agents carried out 21 household raids in different locations in Malaga and another 15 in Bulgaria.

The courts have since ordered the seizure of 6 buildings and 18 vehicles and the freezing of several bank accounts.

The investigation began in September 2014, when a woman of Bulgarian nationality showed up at the Local Police Station in Marbella, claiming to have escaped from people who were forcing her into prostitution in the Puerto Banus area.

After months of investigation, cops learned how victims of the racket were brought from Bulgaria to Malaga and put up in apartments in Torremolinos.

From that moment on, they were told, they would be working as prostitutes for the gang.

If they refused, they were violently attacked by gang members, who would threaten to harm their families, including their children, back home in Bulgaria.

Each apartment containing the trafficked women had a  ‘controller’, an older Bulgarian woman and a member of the organization, who was constantly watching over them.

She would prevent them from interacting with people outside of the gang, so that their only contacts were their exploiters and fellow victims.

The women were ordered to work the streets of Puerto Banus, and were told to bring their clients to hotels or brothels chosen and arranged by the organization.

These are also controlled by women of the organization, known as ‘mamis’.

Throughout their whole time here, the women were under the total control other members of the organization, who collected them in Torremolinos in the late afternoon and moved them in several vehicles to Puerto Banus, in groups of six or seven girls.

Once the day was over, they would pick them up and take them back to their apartments.