Revised 11 October 2000

(Please note: I have not researched the status of the following organization, and have included it in government reports as the report can be found on a U.S. government agency site.)

Center for the Study of Intelligence
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
Exceptional Intelligence Analyst Program
An Intelligence Monograph

"International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime" by Amy O'Neill Richard

Date of Information: November 1999 (Published) April 2000
http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/traffic/report/

APPENDIX II: International Organized Crime and its Involvement in Trafficking Women and Children Abroad
http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/traffic/report/append2.htm

Excerpt: "Russian Organized Crime: Russian organized crime's traditional involvement in prostitution has grown to include trafficking. Russian organized crime provides "the roof," or cover for trafficking operations, while lower-level Russian criminals manage recruitment and logistics. Russian criminals often operate behind the facades of employment, travel, modeling, and/ or matchmaking agencies. The Global Survival Network concurs that traffickers use matchmaking or marriage agency databases to identify women looking for a better life abroad. Another American non-governmental organization, MiraMed, says traffickers in Russia have gone so far as to set up "career day" booths in institutes and universities, promising profitable work abroad. Traffickers often provide women with counterfeit travel documents or assist them in obtaining genuine documents through fraud. Russian organized crime groups are reportedly cooperating with Albanian, Turkish, former Yugoslavian crime groups, Chinese Triads, and the Japanese Yakuza to traffic women to Western Europe and Japan. [151]

The International Organization for Migration and the Global Survival Network report that Russian organized crime groups control European prostitution industries, such as those in Poland, Germany, and Italy. Bulgarian Interior Ministry Chief Secretary Bozhidar Popov has also said that Russian criminals are trafficking Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Chechen women through Bulgaria to Turkey, Greece and elsewhere in Western Europe for prostitution. One major Russian criminal syndicate, the Mogilevich organization, owns night clubs in Prague, Riga, and Kiev and has engaged in trafficking in women for forced prostitution at these clubs. [152] The powerful Izmailovskaya syndicate is under intense investigation by a variety of European law enforcement structures for involvement in trafficking in women and children as well as drug trafficking and counterfeit cigarette manufacturing. Lithuanian Member of Parliament Vilija Aleknaite-Abramikiene reports that Russian organized crime groups are heavily involved in trafficking women for the sex industry in Lithuania. In Russia's Far East, Russian criminals reportedly supplied Russian women to brothels and clubs in Hong Kong and Macao.

Commander Ina Volf of the Israeli national police believes that Russian organized crime is involved in trafficking from the Newly Independent States. [153] A report by Israel's Women's Network found that Russian organized crime controls the sex industry throughout Israel. There are roughly nine to ten Russian prostitution rings operating in Israel. Territory has been divided among the crime bosses. It has become a whole industry; recruiting the women, bringing them to Israel, and distributing them to the various brothels. [154] Knesset member Marina Solodkin claims that local Israeli mafioso are also involved in the trafficking industry. [155]

Israel's Women's Network also reports that a protection racket has grown up around the trafficking and prostitution business in Israel. There is a symbiotic relationship between the police and pimps in which pimps may provide useful intelligence to police on criminal activity in Israel. The police see them as valuable sources of information and work to turn the pimps into collaborators. Overall, trafficking and prostitution is a lucrative business in Israel where Soviet-immigrant Israeli bosses make anywhere from $1, 000 to $4, 000 a day off the women."

Footnotes:

151. Global Survival Network, "Crime and Servitude: An Expose of the Traffic in Women for Prostitution from the Newly Independent States," October 1997.

152. University of Pittsburgh, The Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies, September 1999.

153. Cable from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, 008375, June 23, 1998.

154. Vandenberg, Martina, Trafficking of Women to Israel and Forced Prostitution, A Report by the Israel Women's Network, November 1997.

155. Cable from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv, 008375, June 23, 1998.

Congressional Report
(House) Speaker's Advisory Group on Russia
"Russia's Road to Corruption: How the Clinton Administration Exported Government Instead of Free Enterprise and Railed the Russian People"
http://policy.house.gov/russia/

Chapter 7: The Rise of Organized Crime
http://policy.house.gov/russia/ch7.html

Of interest in Chapter 7 is the photo:

"THE NEW RUSSIANS: Russians pay their respects to a fallen gang member. Mikhail Kuchin, portrayed on his tombstone, is holding keys to his Mercedes Benz, a symbol of new Russian power. In the absence of market reforms in Russia, organized crime replaced the state as property distributor and dispute arbiter, while it stifled legitimate entrepreneurs."

Congressional Research Service Report
Trafficking in Women and Children: The U.S. and International Response. May 10, 2000. 98-649 C
http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/traffic/crs0510.htm

(Begin excerpts) "The former Soviet Union is now believed to be the largest new source of trafficking for prostitution and the sex industry, with over 100,000 trafficked each year from that region...

Causes of Rise in Trafficking

The reasons for the increase in trafficking are many. In general, the criminal business feeds on poverty, despair, war, crisis, and ignorance. The globalization of the world economy has increased the movement of people across borders, legally and illegally, especially from poorer to wealthier countries. International organized crime has taken advantage of the freer flow of people, money, goods and services to extend its own international reach.

Other contributing factors include:

...The disinterest and in some cases even complicity of governments is another big problem. Many law-enforcement agencies and governments ignore the plight of trafficking victims and downplay the scope of the trafficking problem. In some cases, police and other governmental authorities accept bribes and collude with traffickers by selling fake documentation, etc.(5) In addition, local police often fear reprisals from criminal gangs so they find it easier to deny knowledge of trafficking.(6) Many countries have no specific laws aimed at trafficking in humans...

Traffickers acquire their victims in a number of ways. Sometimes women are kidnapped outright in one country and taken forcibly to another. In other cases, victims are lured with job offers. Traffickers entice victims to migrate voluntarily with false promises of good paying jobs in foreign countries as au pairs, models, dancers, domestic workers, etc. Traffickers advertise these phony jobs, as well as marriage opportunities abroad in local newspapers. Russian crime gangs reportedly use marriage agency databases and match-making parties to find victims. In some cases, traffickers approach women or their families directly with offers of well-paying jobs elsewhere. After providing transportation and false documents to get victims to their destination, they subsequently charge exorbitant fees for those services, creating lifetime debt bondage.

While there is no single victim stereotype, a majority of trafficked women are under the age of 25, With many in their mid to late teens. The fear among customers of infection with HIV and AIDS has driven traffickers to recruit younger women and girls, some as young as seven, erroneously perceived by customers to be too young to have been infected.

Trafficking victims are often subjected to cruel mental and physical abuse in order to keep them in servitude, including beating, rape, starvation, forced drug use, confinement, and seclusion. Once victims are brought into destination countries, their passports are often confiscated. Victims are forced to have sex, often unprotected, with large numbers of partners, and to work unsustainably long hours. Many victims suffer mental break-downs and are exposed to sexually-transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS. They are often denied medical care and those who become sick are sometimes even killed.

...East Asia, especially Japan, is also a destination for trafficked women from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Europe. The former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe have replaced Asia as the main source of trafficked women to Western Europe. Victims come from Russia, Ukraine, and other East European countries. With the economic and political turmoil after the collapse of the Soviet Union, trafficking from the region has escalated from a minor problem before 1991 into a major crisis. As criminal organizations have grown, especially in Russia, they have gravitated to this lucrative business. Russian organizations now play a dominant role not just in the trafficking of Russian women but also women from throughout Eastern Europe. Russian organized crime groups and others including Albanian, Estonian, Chechen, Serb, and Italian groups are involved in human trafficking in Europe. Furthermore, Russian organized crime is starting to take over the sex industry in a number of West European countries. Russian criminal groups reportedly are also gaining control of prostitution in Israel, and parts of the United States.(14)

The largest number of the more than 175,000 victims trafficked annually from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe come from Russia and Ukraine. In addition, several Central and East European countries are reported to be source, receiving, and transit countries. The conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo provided new opportunities for traffickers in the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans. Recently, traffickers have targeted refugee women who fled Kosovo. According to the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. Albanian traffickers have smuggled thousands of Kosovo women into Italy by boat for the sex trade.

An estimated 70 percent of Russian and East European victims are believed to be sent to West European countries (especially Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, Austria, England). Another 15 percent are sent to the Middle East (especially Israel and Saudi Arabia) and the Far East (especially Japan and Thailand). About 5,000 or 3 percent are thought to be sent to the United States or Canada. The remainder are sent to Central European countries, especially Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic.(15)

...Women from the former Soviet Republics are sent to Israel. According to the Israel Women's Network, every year several hundred to 2000 women from Russia and the former Soviet Union are brought to Israel by well-organized criminal groups..."(End excerpts from http://www.usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/traffic/crs0510.htm)

Please note that although the U.S.A. Congress passed an anti-trafficking bill, one of the provisions was "Withhold U.S. non-humanitarian assistance and instruct the U.S. executive director of each multilateral development bank and the International Monetary Fund to vote against non-humanitarian assistance to such country, unless continued assistance is deemed to be in the U.S. national interest".(emphasis mine)

Despite the fact that the U.S. national interest never coincides with Israel's, Israel continues to get billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. The Israeli's get their rape for profit and extortion monies, too.

United States Department of State, Information Programs, Global Issues: Trafficking

http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/global_issues/human_trafficking.html

Global perspective fact sheets, congressional testimony, U.S. government initiatives, international initiatives, organizations. (Watch for the official policy: mum's the word...try not to mention the jews.)

If you look at the map where all the anti-trafficking meetings have been held--not even one was held in Israel.