The court followed the requisitions of the public prosecutor. For some defendants, it even went further. He imposed very heavy prison sentences on the fifteen defendants of the Bulgarian prostitution network tried by the Bobigny court.
The clan chiefs who forced young Bulgarian women to hustle at the gates of Paris were sentenced to 10 years in prison with security sentences and fines of several hundred thousand euros, permanent bans from territory and deprivation of civil rights.
These men from the Bulgarian Roma community were prosecuted for aggravated procuring and trafficking in human beings. Prostitutes were considered slaves. After having recruited them in underprivileged regions of Bulgaria, they seduced them and dangled them a job as housekeepers in France. Once there, they were beaten and paid almost all of their earnings to their executioners.
None of the victims had filed a complaint.
They lived a real hell, chaining the passes for ridiculous sums. Some were even timed during their performances. They could be resold to other pimps as mere merchandise for a thousand euros. None of these victims has lodged a complaint and they will not receive one euro from the heavy fines imposed by the court. On a stretch of sidewalk, along the roads, they were subject to the street bosses, prostitutes who had risen in rank. These were shown to be just as cruel as the caïds.
In this network there was also the mother of a pimp. Nikolinka, 60, collected money from prostitution and she would have sought to reinvest it in Bulgaria in real estate.
An estimate put the earnings made by a girl at €9,000 per month, but the investigation was unable to say more about the wealth accumulated by the pimps and their families. Nikolinka, who appeared free, was sentenced to 5 years in prison, including one year suspended with a warrant and a fine of €500,000.
A heavier sentence than the requisitions of the prosecution who had demanded three years of detention and a 100,000 € fine. Me Honegger, his lawyer, decided to appeal, as did Me Beaufils, who was defending one of the main clan leaders sentenced to ten years in prison and a 300,000 fine.
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