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Raids in three states crack sex-trafficking ring

Over 150 police officers in western Germany took part in raids across three states on Tuesday, cracking what they believe to have been a human trafficking ring. They freed at least two teenage girls thought to be living in “enslavement.”

Published: 25 October 2012 07:16 CEST

Raids in three states crack sex-trafficking ring

Photo: DPA

The raids happened simultaneously at 14 different buildings. Police in France and Belgium also stormed several houses in the hope of busting the Kosovan sex slave ring, Der Spiegel magazine said on Wednesday.

Officers managed to free a 14-year-old girl in Baden-Württemberg and put her in the care of a victim support group.

In Germany alone, authorities have their eye on 22 people, four of whom are women. During the raids they arrested four main suspects, aged between 18 and 57, who face potential charges of human trafficking, rape, bodily harm, and false imprisonment.

The family-run gang may have smuggled 50 girls from Kosovo into the country, as well as into Belgium, Scandinavia and France, using fake passports from other members of the gang, police said in a statement.

Officers targeted houses in Hesse, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg. They have been gathering information on the ring since 2011, when they found a 15-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted.

The Local/jcw

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German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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