The National Police has dismantled a criminal network dedicated to the sexual exploitation of Nigerian women operating in Lanzarote. SThree people have been arrested, including a woman who participated in the recruitment process of her own daughter, and one of them has been imprisoned.
According to the police force, two victims of this network have been released, which was made up of nationals of Nigeria, where active members of the organization have been detected, whose activity was focused on Lanzarote, where the women were sexually exploited.
The investigation began after a complaint from one of the victims who reported her trafficking process and the sexual exploitation suffered in Spain when she was still a minor, confirming to the agents the existence of the network. The woman reported that she had been forced to work as a prostitute in public, in order to pay a debt that had been imposed on her for bringing her to Spain and that amounted to 20,000 euros.
Likewise, the agents found out that, under the demand of people in charge of the direct exploitation of the victims, they carried out the captures in Nigeria, one of which turned out to be the daughter of one of the detainees, so her mother would have participated in this process. According to the National Police, the women were made a false promise of a better life in Europe, taking advantage of the precarious economic situation they suffered, which they are forced to pay an imposed debt and not to report anything to the police.
The story of one of the victims about how she arrived in Lanzarote
After the recruitment phase, they were usually provided with fraudulent documentation. One of the victims explained that they tried to transfer her by air with a passport and visa issued by the Greek authorities in the name of a third person. At the border control of the Adolfo Suárez- Madrid Barajas Airport, the falsity of her document was detected and she was returned to Nigeria.
For this reason, she was transferred again by land from that country to Libya, and then tried to cross from the African continent to the European continent by zodiac-type boat. On this occasion, she was intercepted by Italian coastguards and referred to an immigrant center, where they later contacted her again to redirect her by air with documentation from another person to the island of Lanzarote, where she was finally sexually exploited.
In the operation carried out in our country, two entries and searches have been carried out in private homes, resulting in the arrest of three people. In them, the investigators have seized various documents related to the investigated activities, such as accounting records of the profits generated by the women who worked as prostitutes, quadrants of their "services", passports and photocopies of different residence permits.
"With trafficking there is no deal: report it"
This operation is part of the National Police Plan against Trafficking in Human Beings for Sexual Exploitation, launched in 2013, and which led to the creation of the Central Brigade against Trafficking in Human Beings, attached to the General Commissariat of Immigration and Borders of the National Police.
With the implementation of this plan, the National Police activated the telephone line 900 10 50 90 and the email trata@policia.es to facilitate citizen collaboration and the anonymous and confidential reporting of this type of crime.