The Russian Duma, with the help of the UN, has prepared a draft law that closes a glaring gap in current legislation, which lacks a provision making the trafficking of people abroad a crime, writes The Guardian (translation on Inopressa.ru. According to official data, last year 7,500 women left legally, but experts believe that 20 times more were taken illegally, mainly to countries such as Greece, Turkey and Portugal. There they are forced to work in the sex industry.
The new law has three main objectives: to ensure public awareness of what trafficking of citizens is, to provide rehabilitation opportunities for victims of this crime, and to provide enforcement measures, that is, implementation. The focus of the new law is the trafficking of living goods for the sex industry, which brings criminal communities involved in it up to $7 billion a year.
Yelena Mizulina, a parliament member who took part in drafting the law, said recently that "the problem of trafficking people abroad is intercontinental." "This is one of the most serious forms of organized crime along with terrorism and drug trafficking, and the income from the slave trade is higher than from drug sales," she added.
Many methods are used to lure a victim. One of them is advertisements in Russian newspapers promising unheard-of earnings in the foreign tourism industry. When a woman arrives to start work, her documents are taken away and she is forced into prostitution.
"It is difficult to count how many women have been taken out of Russia, since it is not a crime and no records are kept," says Yelena Turukanova, a researcher at the Institute of Socio-Economic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "So far, one can only roughly say that it is about $160,000 a year. Thus, the official figure of 7,500 is only 5% of this estimate. The majority - over 50% - end up in the sex industry, either openly as in the Netherlands, or underground - stripping, prostitution, escort. I am skeptical about the new law, because it is unclear how to stop this phenomenon deeply rooted in the economic system. It is impossible to eliminate illegal migration, but we must try. This is only a first step."
Last October, a joint operation by the Italian police and Europol ended with the arrest of 80 people suspected of aiding the Russian mafia, which had established a huge prostitution syndicate operating on a ring scheme. More than a thousand police officers raided a network of travel agents, bus companies, and hotel owners in Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.