In March, the Oslo police acted against an apartment building in central Oslo. Inside, they found a brothel. Virtually all the apartments had been used for sex sales. The police believe a Norwegian-Ukrainian network is behind it and has made millions on the pimping business. Around 200 women are said to have been brought from several countries in Eastern Europe and worked around Norway in addition to the apartment building brothel. These are some of the places news knows that the network has had activity: In this apartment building in central Oslo, large parts of the network’s main activities have taken place. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news Bygården in central Oslo In an anonymous apartment building in central Oslo, a few hundred meters away from the castle and the Storting, was the brothel. About 100 women lived and worked there. The police enter the apartment building on March 8, 2022. Photo: Privat – It is an address that has been the central in the Oslo area, an entire apartment building in the center of Oslo, which has been rented by this network and appeared as a brothel by that almost all the apartments in the building have been inhabited by prostitutes who have sold sex from there. Police attorney Jens Andenæs is happy that the police have managed to stop the pimping. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news This is what police attorney Jens Andenæs in the Oslo police district tells news. – It is an unwanted activity that the police have now brought to an end, he says. Gunhild Vehusheia is an assistance lawyer for one of the prostituted women. She reacts to the fact that the brothel has been allowed to remain undisturbed. – I think it is absolutely incredible that no one has discovered it, and that we in little Oslo have brothel apartment buildings, she says. From Stavanger to Drammen and northwards Some of the sex sales must also have taken place elsewhere in Norway. – In addition to work from an apartment in Oslo, she was sent to apartments elsewhere in the country, says Vehusheia about her client. One of the places was in Drammen. news found one of the apartments the network is said to have disposed of: The network has disposed of apartments in several places in the country, including Drammen. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news When the women worked elsewhere than at the brothel in Oslo, the role distributions were a little different, according to Vehusheia. Assistance lawyer Gunhild Vehusheia says that her client worked in several places in Norway. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news Her client has explained that it was then the women themselves who were responsible for collecting and delivering the money they earned. In Oslo, there were separate people in the network who had this job, she says. The women were also sent further south in the country, but could also be sent north. – It is rare to see that apparatus with a brothel in Oslo, in Drammen, they travel to Stavanger, they travel further north in the country. It is also quite obvious that they know this well, says Vehusheia. news is not aware of which places in northern Norway are in question. Some of the women also worked in Stavanger. The photo was taken in a different context. Photo: Øystein Otterdal / news Eiendommen på Romerike In connection with the investigation, the police followed a BMW from the apartment building in Oslo and stopped it somewhere in Romerike. In this house on Romerike lived the “driver” in the network. Here the police found another woman. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news When they go to the address where the “driver” lived, the house in the picture above, they find another prostitute in another apartment in the same building. news also tracked down the BMW that was used in the transport to a place in Romerike: The police found the BMW that was used to transport women into the country somewhere in Romerike. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news The hotel in Sweden Many of the women were transported to Norway through the forest from Sweden. The owner of an accommodation in Sweden, which is located close to the Norwegian border, was surprised that cars full of women kept coming. There they were dropped off, before being picked up the next day. No sex has been sold at the hotel in Sweden. It has only been used as accommodation for the women before they were transported on. The hotel owner has no connection to the network. It was also a tip from the Swedish police that made the ball roll with the Oslo police. Operators in Mexico Four of the eight accused in the case are charged with human trafficking in addition to pimping. The accused Ukrainian woman’s defender, Helene Elness. Photo: Truls Alnes Antonsen / news All four deny criminal guilt for human trafficking. The main Ukrainian woman in her 50s admits criminal guilt for having promoted prostitution. – But she does not see herself as a pimp, even though she has rented out rooms. She does not do that, says the woman’s defender Helene Elness. Elness says the woman wanted to get involved first and foremost to secure working conditions for the women. She then saw an opportunity to make money from it. Read more about all the accused under the pictures, and how they relate to the accusations: Tore Hellebust in the Oslo police’s human trafficking group says such a case will always have international branches. Police have found traces of at least one of the operators working from Mexico. According to Tore Hellebust, the network had operators in Mexico. Photo: news – In this case, there may be facilitators and operators on the other side of the world, for example in Mexico, or in countries with which Norway does not have such good relations or co-operation agreements. This makes our investigative opportunities difficult, says Hellebust. Most came from Ukraine. Police lawyer Andenæs says that the women have usually been recruited where they live, through channels in social media. The women come mainly from Ukraine, but also other countries in Eastern Europe. – Women from Belarus, Romania, Moldova and Russia have also been recruited, Andenæs says. Hellebust hopes they have now slowed down part of the human trafficking business into Norway. – By investing so broadly in this case, we will probably turn out an entire network. We take out part of the receiving link, and it will then probably stop back to the transit country. We do not know if it will have a lasting effect, but we see that we must invest in larger, organized networks in order to reach our goals.
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Believes the network has operated in several Norwegian cities – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
