Police identify mastermind behind prostitution ring

SIBU: The police have identified the mastermind behind a prostitution ring that they smashed on Tuesday.When contacted yesterday, acting police chief Supt Zamani Hamdan said the man is a foreigner.

He also disclosed that this was the first time they came across such a ring whose members were all foreigners.

He said the leader brought young women from his country to work as prostitutes here.

The police stormed his den on Tuesday at Jalan Tuanku Osman where a pimp and 10 foreign call girls in their 20s were arrested.

“But the ring leader was not there because he was taking his pregnant wife back to his country.”

Zamani said police would launch a hunt for the leader using information they had received.

He confirmed that when the foreign call girls were brought in using social visit passes, the leader hid them on the upper floor of a shop where the women were placed under the care of an elderly foreign woman.

He further confirmed that the pimp, a local youth in his early 20s, was hired by the ring leader.

He was arrested together with the 10 call girls.

The police are expected to charge the pimp and the call girls, but Zamani would not confirm what possible charges would be at this stage of the investigation.

“After our investigation is completed, we shall hand the case to the deputy public prosecutor.”

Zamani said the police did not regard the case as human trafficking because the women were not forced to come.

“They willingly followed the ring leader into Sarawak and willingly got involved in the flesh trade. They were not smuggled in.”

He said the police were also investigating the allegation that these women had violated their social passes.

It is said that when the women arrived here, they would stay at a rented place in Jalan Tuanku Osman, and the pimp would take them to meet their clients in budget hotels.

Chinese dailies reported yesterday that the pimp charged the clients RM60 each for an encounter with one of the women.

On whether there were other foreign call girls in Sibu, Zamani said some had been arrested before.

“But we have not arrested such foreigners in a group like what we did on Tuesday.”

On complaints by women in Sibu about their husbands having relationships with call girls from China, he said the police were looking into the matter.

“On cases like this, we must establish the evidence of their involvement in immoral activities, like what we are doing in the current investigation.”