Main suspect in large procurement case vanishes despite police travel ban

Woman is believed to have slipped abroad

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A Russian woman suspected of having been one of the leaders of the large hotel prostitution ring operating in Finland and reported by Helsingin Sanomat in October 2007, has disappeared, in spite of a ban on travel imposed by the Finnish authorities. The police have failed to contact the woman since the turn of the year, regardless of the fact that a district court had ordered her to report to the authorities once a week.
     
In the autumn, the district court placed the woman under arrest on suspicion of procurement. The woman was behind bars for a couple of months, until the court - advised by the police - set her free to wait for the possible trial.
      “The woman’s attorney affirmed that she would stay in Finland. A number of other suspects were freed at the same time”, says Det. Insp. Seppo Sillanpää.
      Sillanpää believes that in spite of the travel ban that was supposed to hamper her escape, the woman has managed to flee from Finland to Russia or some other country. Her passport remains in Sillanpää’s safekeeping at the Pasila Police Station.
     
The police have now more or less completed their investigations into the large-scale procurement case. All that remains is the compiling of the records of the investigation.
      Police believe that the organisation under scrutiny has procured customers for about 150 women in more than 20 cities and towns between 2005 and 2007. The ring’s prostitutes operated in various locations across the country in medium- to high-class hotels.
      One woman could have up to 13-15 customers per day.
     
The investigators are of the opinion that the ring was led by a man from St. Petersburg. The vanished Russian woman plus two other Russian women acted as the executives of the gang under the leadership of the St. Petersburg man.
      The women brought prostitutes to Finland from Russia. They held the organisation together with the help of a number of employees. The police have not managed to catch the other two female leaders or the St. Petersburg man, nor have they managed to link these individuals with the case to the degree that would earn them the status of an official suspect in the crime investigation.
     
What complicates the investigation is Russia’s refusal to interrogate its citizens on request from the Finnish authorities.
      “It was a sheer coincidence that this one woman happened to be in Finland during the time when we started our raid operations and arrests of individuals”, Sillanpää explains.
      The police suspect that in addition to the vanished woman around twenty other people have committed aggravated procurement.
      According to the police these individuals were the woman’s subordinates in the pimping ring.
     
This is not the first time that Finnish officials have had trouble keeping tabs on a Russian woman.
      A similar case took place in 2005, when a court sentenced one Tatyana Viitanen in absentia to more than two years' imprisonment for renting out apartments belonging to the Russian Trade Mission for use by prostitutes.
      Viitanen was ordered to be taken into custody if found, but she had apparently slipped across the border during a strike by Frontier Guard personnel, and is now thought to be living in Moscow.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Police say many well-known hotels used by Russian prostitution ring (19.10.2007)
  Russian commercial representation in Helsinki denies receiving prostitution money (21.1.2005)
  Police say brothel planned for Mariinski Theatre apartment house in Helsinki (3.8.2006)

Helsingin Sanomat