DOZENS of women have been freed from ‘sexual slavery’ after Spanish and French police smashed a cross-border Chinese prostitution mafia.
Police said they rescued 60 victims – all Chinese nationals – from the gang’s bases in Barcelona and France, while also arresting 22 members who now face charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
The women were forced to live in ‘sub-human’ conditions, police have said, with dozens ‘crammed into areas without natural light, with bunk beds lined up one after another,’ treated as mere ‘commodities serving the organisation.’
A police source told Cope the Chinese mafia behind the ring was ‘utterly ruthless.’
Once recruited, the women were subjected to ‘conditions of slavery’ and kept under constant surveillance.
The level of control was so extreme that ‘even after paying off their debt, they would remain with the organisation due to their irregular status,’ the source added.
The probe, which lasted more than two years, began thanks to the exchange of police intelligence between both countries.
Alarm bells rang when investigators spotted some of its members living in Spain were travelling very frequently to France.
The trail led officers to Barcelona and nearby towns, where the ringleaders were based.
Police sources said the mafia had shifted most of its operations to France due to ‘the police pressure we have been applying for many years in Spain.’
From several properties in Spain – one of the network’s key hubs – the gang ran multiple call centres.
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Using French phone lines active in Spain, they ‘coordinated the sexual services of these exploited women in France, for the most part,’ police have explained.
These call centres handled adverts on escort sites and linked clients to the flats where victims were exploited.
But sexual exploitation was not the network’s only activity, police said.
Like other organised crime groups, it diversified into drug trafficking within the Asian community, including producing and distributing designer drugs sold exclusively within its own market, such as ‘god’s water’ and ketamine.
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