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Traffickers are not only sending cocaine from Latin American countries. At the moment, in Colombia, police are not charging suspects with international drug trafficking, but with trafficking dozens of girls and women from Medellin and Bogota to be used as sex workers in Albania, Anila Hoxha reveals in Exclusive.
With full will, but only to learn later what circle of hell they had entered by practicing prostitution, hundreds of young girls from other Latin American countries fell into the net of trafficker Lucas Betancur and his father, considered the bosses of one of the criminal groups, who used all methods in the forced sex industry. Almost 1 million euros is estimated to have been transferred by their victims who worked as escorts in Albania, who practiced prostitution throughout the country, with victims who were seduced and remained in slavery of body exploitation, then circulating in Serbia, Croatia and Spain. For Albania, this phenomenon is becoming a concern, especially in the last four years.
Betancur's network is not the only one. Girls from Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Ukraine, China, Afghanistan, Turkey, Romania are registered daily in Albanian police files, which describe shocking data. The first form: seduction through deception for a better life or hostage to an unpaid debt; this is enough for these young women, starting from 19 years old and up to 40 years old, sometimes as masseuses and sometimes advertised willingly, to practice prostitution in an invisible world, but nevertheless to appear openly on escort sites.
" My name is Valentina, I came here with a friend who is the person who suggested I travel to Albania. In Colombia, she was practically a friend of my house, so I decided to come with her. I did not know that I would come for this job and that it was legally punishable. A contact of hers was waiting for us; I was not informed that prostitution is prohibited and so I accepted to cut my ticket. I needed money and, above all, I trusted my friend.
The trafficker, when we arrived here, warned us that with the work we were going to do we could get into trouble with the law, that we should be careful, and he even threatened my friend when he found our apartment. They lied to both of us. We came to a place we knew nothing about. The day the police came to our apartment, he was a friend to me.
In Colombia, prostitution is allowed, so when I came to Albania I didn't know that the police would be knocking on my door. My real job in Colombia was as an esthetician, but I have a child to raise and four other family members who lived on my salary alone. The minimum wage in Colombia is not enough for anything.
The traffickers convinced me that money is made here and so I came; my goal was to have my own beauty center when I returned to Medellín. I stayed in Albania for four months. During this time, I couldn't even pay my family's rent there, because I didn't see the money either when it was paid or when it was received. I am a victim in this whole story, because in Albania prostitution is a crime; now we have problems with justice and the boss is in prison," she said.
The 23-year-old's story is similar to that of other girls arrested in at least 75 operations in Albania in one year. Many of them, the moment they board the plane to their homeland, know that in exchange for money they will work as sex workers. They present themselves as experts, who are paid by the hour or day. Without their real names and with a false identity, the nameless girls are served through digital platforms in virtual showcases./ TCH
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