December 14, 2007
Bojan Pancevski in Vienna
Aspiring beauty queens and glamour models have been lured into prostitution by an international gang whose clientele included politicians and wealthy businessmen, Austrian police said yesterday.
Call girls, some under the age of 18, allegedly met clients in locations ranging from five-star hotels in New York to yachts on the Côte d’Azur, charging €10,000 (£7,189) a night.
The operation was allegedly managed from a modest home in the Austrian village of Waidhofen an der Thaya by a 44-year-old woman, Cornelia Suess.
She allegedly used a beauty contest booking agency as a cover for her operation, enticing women from Eastern Europe and countries such as Venezuela and Lebanon to Austria with the promise of modelling contracts and pageants in European locations.
Ms Suess and 18 other people were arrested after a year-long covert operation involving police in Austria, France and the Czech Republic. They face charges of people-trafficking and money laundering.
Colonel Gerhard Joszt, of the Austrian Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau, said: “The organisation used an exclusive hotel in New York and a luxury yacht docked near the Côte d’Azur as showrooms where young women would be presented to rich customers, including politicians, top businessmen and members of the international gentry. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were also allegedly one of their best markets.
“All of the customers were very, very rich and influential and we are now gathering evidence to raise charges against some of them.”
The agency would allegedly approach models, who apparently included two former national beauty queens, who were then hired on fake fashion shooting contracts and delivered to yachts, hotels or private villas, where middlemen would take away their passports and force them to have sex with clients.
“Some of the victims, all of whom were handpicked as especially attractive and well educated, would be intimidated into offering their sexual services, and some of them would be forced with violence. We are now questioning them and the evidence they have thus far provided is certain to lead to more arrests,” Colonel Joszt said.
A police spokesperson also said that Arab sheikhs were among the clients and that the former beauty queens were lured to Paris and “beaten into submission and tyrannised” until they agreed to provide sexual services.
The names of the alleged clients cannot be revealed because the investigation is continuing, but Colonel Joszt told The Times that many of them were “very prominent and known to the world public”.
He could not confirm whether any of them were Britons.
The investigating authorities are studying recordings of tapped telephone conversations, as well as bank transactions.
Ms Suess, who denies the accusations, has a string of previous convictions for prostitution-related offences, the police said. She was arrested in the late 1990s in Monaco for delivering young women to a nephew of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and sentenced to three years in prison in 2001.
Ms Suess has been involved in the Queen of the World contest since 2005.
More than 100,000 women in the European Union become victims of human trafficking every year, some of whom are being forced into hard work, crime or prostitution, according to a report by the European Parliament.
Call girls, some under the age of 18, allegedly met clients in locations ranging from five-star hotels in New York to yachts on the Côte d’Azur, charging €10,000 (£7,189) a night.
The operation was allegedly managed from a modest home in the Austrian village of Waidhofen an der Thaya by a 44-year-old woman, Cornelia Suess.
She allegedly used a beauty contest booking agency as a cover for her operation, enticing women from Eastern Europe and countries such as Venezuela and Lebanon to Austria with the promise of modelling contracts and pageants in European locations.
Ms Suess and 18 other people were arrested after a year-long covert operation involving police in Austria, France and the Czech Republic. They face charges of people-trafficking and money laundering.
Colonel Gerhard Joszt, of the Austrian Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau, said: “The organisation used an exclusive hotel in New York and a luxury yacht docked near the Côte d’Azur as showrooms where young women would be presented to rich customers, including politicians, top businessmen and members of the international gentry. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia were also allegedly one of their best markets.
“All of the customers were very, very rich and influential and we are now gathering evidence to raise charges against some of them.”
The agency would allegedly approach models, who apparently included two former national beauty queens, who were then hired on fake fashion shooting contracts and delivered to yachts, hotels or private villas, where middlemen would take away their passports and force them to have sex with clients.
“Some of the victims, all of whom were handpicked as especially attractive and well educated, would be intimidated into offering their sexual services, and some of them would be forced with violence. We are now questioning them and the evidence they have thus far provided is certain to lead to more arrests,” Colonel Joszt said.
A police spokesperson also said that Arab sheikhs were among the clients and that the former beauty queens were lured to Paris and “beaten into submission and tyrannised” until they agreed to provide sexual services.
The names of the alleged clients cannot be revealed because the investigation is continuing, but Colonel Joszt told The Times that many of them were “very prominent and known to the world public”.
He could not confirm whether any of them were Britons.
The investigating authorities are studying recordings of tapped telephone conversations, as well as bank transactions.
Ms Suess, who denies the accusations, has a string of previous convictions for prostitution-related offences, the police said. She was arrested in the late 1990s in Monaco for delivering young women to a nephew of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and sentenced to three years in prison in 2001.
Ms Suess has been involved in the Queen of the World contest since 2005.
More than 100,000 women in the European Union become victims of human trafficking every year, some of whom are being forced into hard work, crime or prostitution, according to a report by the European Parliament.
From The Times
October 20, 2007
When Sandra was 16 she went to a party near her home in Lithuania, where she was warned her that if she did not go to England she and her family would be hurt.
She was told that she was being sent to work abroad but had no idea that she would be forced into prostitution, entertaining up to 20 men a day in London and Birmingham.
She was put on to a coach with an escort, to make sure that she did not escape, and endured a “fraught” journey to Poland. After a 27-hour trip via Germany, she arrived in Britain, where she was met at a café near Paddington Station by Virginijus Suchodolskis, who was sentenced yesterday. He told her that he owned her and she was forced to work at brothels in West London owned by Edward Hui, a waiter.
At times she was given cocaine to make her more compliant. When she told her “owners” that she wanted to leave she was warned that her legs would be cut off and she was beaten.
On October 28 last year Sandra (not her real name) mustered the courage to escape and went to the police about the organisation that had forced her from her family and into prostitution.
She was told that she was being sent to work abroad but had no idea that she would be forced into prostitution, entertaining up to 20 men a day in London and Birmingham.
She was put on to a coach with an escort, to make sure that she did not escape, and endured a “fraught” journey to Poland. After a 27-hour trip via Germany, she arrived in Britain, where she was met at a café near Paddington Station by Virginijus Suchodolskis, who was sentenced yesterday. He told her that he owned her and she was forced to work at brothels in West London owned by Edward Hui, a waiter.
At times she was given cocaine to make her more compliant. When she told her “owners” that she wanted to leave she was warned that her legs would be cut off and she was beaten.
On October 28 last year Sandra (not her real name) mustered the courage to escape and went to the police about the organisation that had forced her from her family and into prostitution.
... Bangkok.
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