A scandal over the alleged involvement of leading judicial figures in the trafficking of prostitutes from eastern Europe threatens to claim more victims, following the sensational arrest of the deputy state prosecutor, Zoran Piperovic. Piperovic was arrested on November 30 with Bajram Orahovac, a restaruant owner, on suspicion of involvement in human trafficking after being mentioned by a Moldovan woman who had escaped from her captors in Podgorica and gone to the police.
The year-old woman, known only as SC, fled from a flat in Podgorica on November 12 and went to the police for help. Montenegro has long been known as a transit point for the profitable business of smuggling women to western countries to work as call girls and prostitutes.
The victims mostly come from Russia, Moldova and Ukraine, seduced by the traffickers with bogus promises of work as waitresses, au pairs or babysitters. The mostly Russian and Albanian traffickers pass their human cargo into the hands of their Montenegrin counterparts.
By then, the women have handed over their documents to the smugglers, are given no money and effectively have no option but to work for them in the sex trade. Irfan Kurpejovic, who comes from a well-known Podgorica family, and businessman Ekrem Jesavic were detained first on the basis of the Moldovan woman's statement to the police on November The two suspects have denied all charges. A week later, the deputy state prosecutor and Orahovac found themselves behind bars. The joint investigation into all four men began on December 3.
Neither the police, the investigative judge, Ana Vukovic, nor the prosecution have publicly explained the four suspects' involvement in the SC case, though the media has not been slow to produce its own versions of events. According to the daily Vijesti, Piperovic's involvement with the Moldovan woman began in when he took her from a pimp in the Bosnian town of Bijeljina, brought her to Montenegro and then "sold" her to the owner of a nightclub in Podgorica called Oskar. It is not clear how Kurpejovic and Jesavic then came into possession of the woman.
