A lot of the gangs are taking advantage of low-cost airlines and the fact that they operate from smaller airports with less sophisticated security, and staff who often have little time to check documents prior to boarding. They will use false documents to embark on the flights, then pass their papers to the facilitator for recycling.
Such sophistication is not the sole province of the Albanians, though it has almost certainly been copied from them. In September 2003 Sarwan Deo was jailed for seven years after being found guilty of running a gang responsible for bringing more than six thousand people into the UK. Deo doctored passports that had been stolen and replaced the photographs with those of the illegal immigrants. Each immigrant was charged around eight thousand pounds for the journey from the Punjab to the UK and Deo’s gang is believed to have earned more than £50 million from the scheme.
Deo, a forty-two-year-old father of four, bribed Indian diplomats and African immigration officials to provide his clients with a complete entry service. It included everything from documentation and rudimentary English lessons to advice on what clothing to wear and accommodation in a succession of safe-houses en route. For those who were caught there was free legal representation, and for those who were deported a second attempt to enter the UK was provided at no extra cost.
The numbers entering the UK illegally are now so large that traditional areas where they could mix in and vanish into the black market are fast becoming saturated. New destinations are being found, sometimes in the most unlikely locations.
When a small three-bedroom house on the Fairstead Estate in west Norfolk burst into flames in the early hours on a Tuesday morning in June 2003, firemen were shocked to discover eighteen Chinese workers sleeping there. All escaped alive. In the weeks before the fire the local council had received thirty-one complaints about overcrowded houses and flats, some containing as many as forty people.
It has since emerged that at least two thousand Chinese workers moved into the King’s Lynn area during 2003, most working in food-processing or farming, often for as little as two pounds per hour. They hang about King’s Lynn bus station in groups, smoking and talking among themselves. If not there or working twelve-hour shifts in the Fens, they can invariably be seen at any of the cut-price supermarkets in the town.
There are also growing numbers from Portugal, Eastern Europe and Albania. PC Tony Lombari, the police minority liaison officer for West Norfolk, said the plentiful supply of land-based or food-processing work makes the area all the more appealing. ‘Some arrive here with nothing more than a phone number on a piece of paper that they’ve carried from home. They will be met by whoever and set up in a home and that’s where it starts to get cloudy. Some come legitimately and some are illegal, but once they are here they can move around and it’s also very difficult to return them without the proper documentation.’
Landlords have been quick to cash in on the boom. They charge the migrants up to forty pounds per person per week. By packing in as many people as possible, properties that would normally rent for perhaps £500 a month can generate almost ten times as much income.
Work is provided by local ‘gangmasters’, who employ people on a day-to-day basis for cash in hand, regardless of their immigration status. In King’s Lynn, dozens of minibuses arrive at the Fairstead Estate each morning to collect hundreds of workers.
Some of the workers are legal, others are illegal and in the middle are those who are claiming asylum. While their claims are being processed they get accommodation but they are not allowed to work, and may have to spend up to six months without any income. It means they are virtually forced to go into the underworld.
Luckily for them the people-smuggling industry is directly linked to an increasingly lucrative black market in illegal workers. Some industries – most notably agriculture and food-processing – have a reputation for turning a blind eye in exchange for being able to pay lower salaries and flout health and safety regulations. In February 2004 gangmasters were blamed for the deaths of nineteen Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned after being caught in fast-moving tides at Morecambe Bay in Lancashire. Locals spoke of hundreds of illegal Chinese workers being moved into the area in the weeks before the tragedy to take advantage of rising cockle prices. The desire to maximise profits and collect the shellfish without the proper permits had led to the Chinese being told to work at dead of night when the incoming tides and stretches of quicksand could not be seen. It later emerged that some of the dead workers were being paid as little as a pound for a full nine-hour shift of backbreaking labour.
Although some of the new arrivals have work lined up or a good idea of the kind of employment they are likely to find, others find themselves forced into virtual slavery. And for increasing numbers of young women brought to this country in search of a better life, the work turns out to be anything but what they expected.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Mei first arrived in Britain from Thailand on a six-month student visa, she could not speak a word of English. Now, just six weeks later and without attending a single lesson, she has picked up several key phrases – ‘massage’, ‘blow job’, ‘condom’ – and she can count up to fifty in five-pound increments.
Each morning she reports for work at a small sauna in Glasgow’s Charing Cross, where she ‘services’ up to twenty clients a day, charging them fifty pounds for full sexual intercourse. Of this, she hands over forty-five to the sauna’s boss to cover her rent, security and contraceptive pills. Any money left over goes towards repayment of the £17,000 debt she owes the Triad gang who arranged her passage. Mei is just one of hundreds of foreign women being trafficked into Britain by major criminal gangs – including the Triads and the Russian Mafia – to work in the UK sex trade.
I learn of her plight not from Mei herself – her English is not good enough and, following a series of exposes by television and print journalists, Mei has been warned by her bosses to report anyone who arrives at the sauna, declines anything more intimate than a massage and proceeds to interview her about her background.
Instead I speak to Sandra, a girl who works in the same sauna to whom I am assigned when I enter. Sandra is short and dyed-blonde. After I have handed over my fee she gives me a small towel and directs me to the shower, then asks if I prefer talc or baby oil for my massage. We walk up a single flight of stairs to a small booth on the top floor, containing a single bed and a small television screen showing pornographic movies on an endless loop.
Sandra pulls off her tight-fitting T-shirt to reveal her naked breasts. She leaves her short skirt in place as she kneels on the edge of the bed and nods towards it, inviting me to join her. Keeping my towel strategically placed, I lie down on my front and immediately feel her oiled hands working up and down my back. Being careful not to sound too much like I’m interviewing her I begin to ask about her life.
She tells me she has been working in brothels for the past five years, since she was nineteen, that she has a young daughter and that she lives with her boyfriend, who is fully aware of what she does but somehow doesn’t mind. ‘It’s weird. In many ways it’s great to have someone to help look after my little girl and to be there, but then at the same time you think if someone really cares for you they wouldn’t want you to be doing this,’ she says sadly.
We begin talking about the morality of the world’s oldest profession and before I know it, before I’ve even had a chance to turn over, my fifteen minutes are up. I tell Sandra how much I’ve enjoyed chatting to her and ask if it is possible to extend it – not so that we can have sex but simply to continue talking.
She reaches for an intercom by the door and buzzes down to Reception, informing them of what is going on. ‘I have to do that,’ she tells me, returning to the bed and slipping her T-shirt on as I scramble to put on my boxer shorts without dropping the towel. ‘Otherwise, if I don’t come out on time, they’d think you’d attacked me and come up here with the knives.’
We talk for another fifteen min
utes and I tell her – honestly – that I find her really interesting. I wonder if it would be possible to meet her away from the brothel for a drink.
Sandra eyes me suspiciously. She explains that she gets this kind of offer at least a dozen times a day. ‘My theory is that the ultimate fantasy for any bloke is to sleep with a prostitute and not have to pay for it. I think they like the idea of being so good in bed that the girl just says, “Nah, mate, you keep the money, I really enjoyed that.”’ But then she gives me her mobile-phone number anyway.
The following morning I call and explain the truth – that I am a writer looking to expose the trade in sex slaves. There is a pause, then Sandra agrees to meet me. She says that it is about time someone knew the truth of what is going on and that many of the women are being treated in the most appalling way.
We arrange to meet in a coffee bar close to Glasgow railway station that same afternoon.
The trade in sex-slave women first hit the headlines in early 2000 when three Russian gangsters linked to a top Lithuanian crime syndicate were jailed for smuggling women into Britain and forcing them to work as prostitutes in brothels in north and west London. Zilvis Paulauskas, Tomas Kazemekaitis and Alenas Ciapas lured four poverty-stricken women from Lithuania, promising that they would be able to earn thousands of pounds after they had paid back the cost of their air fare. On arrival the women were kept prisoner, charged hundreds of pounds a week in ‘rent’, and told that their families would be attacked if they tried to escape.
The racket – which generated tens of thousands of pounds for the trio – was broken when police launched an undercover investigation after spotting a card in a telephone box advertising a ‘blonde Russian kitten’. The investigation threw up alarming information about the numbers of trafficked women involved in the capital’s sex trade. A police survey of flats used by Soho prostitutes found that 60 per cent were occupied by women of Eastern European origin.
But the criminal gangs behind the multi-million-pound industry now believe the capital is too well policed to be viable and in recent months have begun establishing new operations in the regions, where profits are almost as high but the risk of detection is minimal. Despite the massive growth in the number of massage parlours offering foreign girls, police forces outside the capital seem ill-equipped to deal with the problem: neither Liverpool, Manchester nor Glasgow have a dedicated Vice Squad, and all admit they do not consider the field a priority because they receive few complaints from the public.
In the heart of Manchester’s Chinatown, one newly launched massage parlour offers a selection of British and Oriental women. The brothel is run by a Vietnamese man who obtains his Thai women via Triad gangs in London. Close by is another new brothel, situated above a popular restaurant, which caters exclusively for Oriental customers and is run by the man reputed to be the head of Manchester’s Wo Sing Wo Triad.
In Glasgow, the sauna where Sandra and Mei work is registered to the name of a prominent Chinese businessman. Local law-enforcement sources say that the man is known to be a pawn of the Triad gangs. One of his business contacts, ‘Dan’, is in charge of bringing the women from Bangkok. Dan recently returned from the Thai capital, having travelled out to find a batch of new recruits, whom he intends to establish in a series of new properties across Glasgow.
According to Sandra the girls are ‘bought’ from the gangs for £15,000 each, then charged £17,000 for their passage once they arrive. ‘The reality is that they make that money back in a few weeks, but because of all the expenses they have to pay, their debt stays the same, no matter how hard they work,’ she says. ‘The Thai girls are popular when they first arrive – all the customers want something different. But after the clients have been with them once, few go back. The problem is that they don’t speak English, so they can’t talk to them. They start off making loads of money but it soon slows down, and they end up with a huge debt that they can never pay back.
‘The Scottish girls have a choice about working, but the Thai girls can get trapped. If they don’t pay off their debts within six months, they’re left with nothing. They become sex slaves. It’s appalling.’
It’s a problem that is repeated all across the country. In June 2003 Thai sisters Bupba Savada and Monporn Hughes were jailed for running a suburban prostitution ring that brought in more than £1 million per year. The pair ran a network of brothels operating in Wimbledon, Surbiton, Harrow and other London suburbs. They paid traffickers just £6000 for each young woman lured from Thailand on the promise of earning a substantial sum as a domestic servant in Britain. Once in London, as illegal immigrants, the women were told they owed Savada and her colleagues £22,000 and were coerced into working as prostitutes. They were taken to a flat in Wimbledon and kept under close supervision as they were ‘trained’. The women were then ‘sold’ to other prostitution rings or sent to work at a string of brothels in the suburbs. Many women had to earn £44,000 before they were allowed their freedom.
The sex-slavery trade is also emerging within the Asian community, another group associated with heroin. Gangs operating under the cover of the Bollywood film and music business are forcing teenage girls to work as prostitutes. The business revolves around a traditional form of Indian dance called mujra. Publicised almost entirely by word of mouth, performances take places after normal closing hours at a small number of venues in the heart of the Asian community.
A typical show will involve up to sixteen women, all wearing traditional costume, dancing one at a time on a stage area to the soundtracks of hit Bollywood films. The audience is exclusively male. Threats of violence are used to force the women to co-operate. As the evening progresses, they come down from the stage and perform private dances for the men and offer them sexual services for between £75 and £100. All the money earned has to be passed back to the organisers and the top promoters are said to make profits of up to £10,000 per night. The women are usually smuggled into the country on the pretext that they are involved in promotional work. Many have been lured away from their homes on the promise of well-paid jobs as dancers or actresses and only learn the truth about what they are required to do when it is too late.
One regular attendee who spoke to me anonymously said, ‘There was always an element of suggestiveness in the mujra tradition – like all dance to some extent – but nowadays it’s all sex and no art. Today going to a mujra is basically just like going to a brothel. Sometimes they do away with the dancing altogether. The girls wear tight clothes, lots of makeup and are very friendly. You are served drinks first, then the madam comes over and asks you to pick out a girl that you like. She is then introduced to you and that’s when you start to negotiate over the price.’
A police source who has studied the trend in trafficking foreign women said he believes that, unless action is taken, the problem – and the violence associated with it – will get even worse, because the profits are enormous compared with the risks. ‘If you get caught smuggling cocaine, you’re looking at twenty years,’ he said. ‘If you smuggle women, the profits can be just as high, and if you get caught the only thing you’re looking at is living off immoral earnings. The most you’ll get is three years. If you’re a criminal, the choice about which to go for is pretty simple.’
Little wonder the fastest growing and most brutal Mafia in Europe has moved in on the act.
Her real name was Ileana but by the time she was rescued it had been so long since anyone had used it that she had nearly forgotten it.
At the age of twelve she was sold for £600 by a relative to a gang of criminals in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia in the former Yugoslavia, who forced her to work as a prostitute. She was taken to a strip club and made to have sex with dozens of customers each day as well as dance. A few months later another gang bought her for £2300. She was taken to Albania and then by speedboat to Naples where she was again forced to work as a prostitute. She was just fifteen.
It was then that she met Albanian Mustapha Kadiu. At first he
seemed different from the men who had used and abused her all her life. He took her to Rome, then said that she should come with him to the UK and start a new life away from prostitution. He gave her a false passport and paid for a trip that took her via Brussels and Ostend to Harwich, Essex, and then by train to Victoria station in London. Kadiu travelled independently to ensure that if Ileana was stopped he would not be caught with her. He took Ileana to his house in Harlesden, where he lived with his cousin, Edmond Ethemi, and a twenty-two-year-old woman who was Ethemi’s girlfriend; she was also a prostitute.
But the promise of a new life away from the world of vice was nothing but a lie. After four weeks Kadiu made Ileana work in saunas in Tottenham, King’s Cross, Camden, West Hampstead and Chalk Farm. He would drop her off in the morning and pick her up in the evening, at least twelve hours later and often more. She was to charge thirty pounds a time and had to earn at least £400 a day. She worked seven days a week, week in, week out. Kadiu, police later noted, was making as much money from pimping just one girl as he would from drug-dealing.
Leaving was not an option. She had no money, no papers and little idea of where she was. She knew that if Kadiu caught her she would be beaten severely. Kadiu convinced Ileana that if she went to the police they would simply hand her straight back to him. Having spent all her life in countries where police corruption was rife, and having been abused by one man after another, she knew no better.
Eventually she plucked up the courage to tell one of her regular clients of her plight and he tipped off Scotland Yard that a girl was ‘in difficulty and needed help’. Police took her to a safe-house then launched a surveillance operation against Kadiu and Ethemi before arresting them.
Gangs Page 35