MOSCOW, September 7 (RIA Novosti) - In the past 18 months, the Russian Interior Ministry's investigation committee has opened 14 criminal cases on human trafficking and six cases on slave labor, a ministry senior official said Wednesday.
Yuri Alexeyev, the acting deputy head of the investigation committee, said that during 18 months of operation, the committee's special unit had uncovered several criminal groups engaged in recruiting citizens for exploitation.
According to Alexeyev, these rings normally recruit groups of several women, promising to buy them tourist visas and help them find legal work abroad. The women are then forced into prostitution to pay for money spent on their travel abroad and their documents are stolen, leaving the women as sexual slaves.
Police in some countries frequently assist this type of sexual exploitation, Alexeyev said. (more)
