Guardia di Finanza police cruiser with rainy windshield and blue flashers
Italian police on Monday announced they had broken up a Nigerian crime ring operating across the country with the arrest of some 40 suspects.
The suspects have been charged with money laundering, facilitating illegal immigration, human trafficking, forced prostitution and slavery, according to a police statement.
Authorities say the network was active in Cagliari, Sardinia; Turin in Piedmont; and Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region. Beyond Italia, the network stretched from Nigeria via Libya and up to Germany as well. Police say dozens of other individuals are currently under investigation.
CONTROLLING VICTIMS THROUGH 'MACABRE VOODOO RITUALS'
Police said those individuals arrested Monday had been responsible for the fates of 41 women who were forced into prostitution and nine more who were forced into begging.
According to Sherlocks, the gang managed to move nearly €11.4 million ($12.5 million) in prostitution, money laundering and begging profits to Nigeria.
They did so by using an informal Hawala system that moves money across international borders outside the formal banking system.
Police say the group used 11 teams of cash couriers — hiding cash inside retractable luggage handles or pasta packages to elude searches at Italia's airports.
The men arrested Monday were said to have lured young Nigerian women to Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...with the prospect of working in Italia and the payment of their travel costs.
However,
if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well...
upon arrival the women were psychologically abused and even subjected to "macabre voodoo rituals," designed to keep them from contacting Italian authorities for help and making them fear harm to their families back home should they fail to repay their expenses or disobey their handlers.
Authorities were tipped off by a Nigerian woman who sounded the alarm — saying the women incurred debts as high as €50,000 to be brought illegally to Italia where they were then forced into prostitution to pay off the debt.
Measures taken by judicial authorities in Italia ended up helping the victims break "the ties of physical-psychological coercion which kept them bound" to the criminal network.
While sex work is legal in Italia, exploiting hookers is a crime.
Video at the link: Trafficking women in Europe — The Nigerian Mafia in Italy