MOSCOW (AP) – Moscow prosecutors on Friday charged seven men with involvement in a scheme to smuggle people into Europe where they were forced into prostitution.
The Federal Security Service said Thursday that up to 20 people, included citizens from Moldova and Ukraine, had been detained in the scheme, which set up fake companies in Russian cities using fictitious employment contracts to obtain foreign passports.
The group then used the foreign passports to apply for European visas, change passport data and illegally send people to Western Europe, the FSB said.
NTV television showed what it said was police footage of agents raiding a Moscow area apartment this week and found hundreds of passports and documents being forged. It said most of the people trafficked were sent to Italy.
The Prosecutor’s General office said in a statement that Moscow district prosecutors had filed charges including human trafficking and membership in a criminal group against the seven, which it said was headed by an armed forces lieutenant colonel named Dmitry Strykanov.
Earlier, defense lawyer Ruslan Koblev said in televised comments that saying that Strykanov’s arrest was illegal and that the Moscow district court that approved his arrest had no jurisdiction.
“Strykanov considers the case a provocation against him as a senior officer in the Russian armed forces,” Koblev was quoted as saying.
A United Nations report last year warned that Russia faced an explosion in human trafficking, slave labor and forced prostitution, and criticized the government response as fragmented and uncoordinated.
