• Police say Russian women lured to Spain with promise of employment
• Once in Granada, women forced to work in strip clubs and as prostitutes
Spain’s National Police have dismantled yet another human-trafficking ring forcing foreign-born women into prostitution in Spain, this one run by a Russian mafia in the Andalusian city of Granada.
According to police reports, women in the Russian city of Volgograd were recruited with false promises of employment in Spain’s tourism industry, then supplied with a Schengen visa and an airline ticket to either Madrid or Barcelona, where they were met by a member of the gang and then driven to Granada.
Once in Granada, they were forced into prostitution by the group, which was being run by a Russian national in Spain who had been arrested on similar charges in 2006 but never sent to jail.
The ring came to the police’s attention after a complaint by a victim of the network, who told police she had been brought to Spain with the promise of work in a restaurant, but had been forced to work in so-called alterne strip clubs in Granada that served as fronts for prostitution.