Georgian women unaware of details of their "business trip"

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Interviews are continuing with the passengers of the tourist bus that was stopped at the Vaalimaa crossing point on the Finnish-Russian border on Tuesday. Officials from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) - Finland's Central Criminal Police - and the Frontier Guard have completed questioning over half of the 48 Georgian women, who all said that they are on a combined holiday and business trip.
      Detective Inspector Mika Ihaksinen reported on Thursday that the four men who had been detained at the Vaalimaa border crossing point all denied involvement in human trafficking.
      Ihaksinen estimates that preliminary investigations will take a couple of days. The interviews will apparently result in refusal of entry to Finland, and the women will be turned back to Georgia through Russia.
      In addition to the middle-aged leader of the tour, also the interpreter and two bus drivers have been detained. All four are Georgian. The tour leader has also previously participated in a similar trip.
     
The group had taken a flight from Tbilisi to Moscow, and a Swedish travel organiser arranged them Schengen visas at the Swedish Consulate in Moscow on Monday. The trip continued by bus to Finland.
      Ihaksinen explained that no young women were obviously included in the group as no visas have been granted to persons under 25 years of age. The women are from 26 to 62 years old.
      The interpreter, who was paid a fee of USD500 for his work during the trip, said that the purpose of the trip included business, creating business relations, and shopping at an Italian market with cheap merchandise. The women have told the same story during the interviews.
      According to Ihaksinen, the women claimed that they had not been offered any jobs. On the other hand, they had been informed of the detailed itinerary only until Stockholm. From that point on, they did not have any information of their accommodation or destinations except for the market place in Italy.
     
When asked how they planned to finance their shopping in Italy, they explained that each of them had paid about USD 3,000 to the tour leader in advance. Part of the sum was supposed to cover travel expenses, and the rest was for personal costs when needed. Should any money be left after the trip, it would be returned to the women, they explained.
     
The leader of the trip had no book-keeping, nor had he any record of the sums of money each of the passengers had given him. He had around EUR 25,000 in cash in his possession.
      Maija Kouki of the Joutseno refugee reception centre said that the women were calm but refused to take any money or food, as they had a lot of packed food with them.
     
The incident has become front-page news even in Sweden. The Swedish travel organiser has contacted the criminal police and complained about being connected with human trafficking.
      The same travel organiser has previously arranged over 20 similar bus tours to Europe. A total of about 50 busloads of Georgian passengers have passed through the Vaalimaa frontier crossing in a similar manner in the course of the past three years.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Busload of Georgian women stopped at border (17.3.2005)
  Russian officials surprised at reports of human trafficking (16.3.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat