A pimp who allegedly flew young Argentinian boys to Paris and forced them into prostitution under the threat of black magic has been arrested.
‘Andrea Chichi’ is the suspected ring-leader of a transgender prostitution gang that allegedly exploited boys from Buenos Aires. Chichi is accused of forcing 90 boys into the illegal trade.
He was arrested by Paris’s BRP police division, along with seven others accused of forcing dozens of transsexuals to sell their bodies in the wealthy western Bois de Boulogne park in the French capital.
A police source told Le Parisien, quoted in The Local, that Chichi ‘pretended he could use black magic’ and ‘would threaten to put a curse or spell’ on any boys who expressed a desire to leave.
‘He had a stranglehold on everyone in the network,’ the source said, adding that those ‘cursed’ felt ‘more exposed to violence, theft and rape’.
According to a police source, quoted in The Local, 43-year-old Chichi was arrested while he tried to board a plane to Buenos Aires, with hundreds of thousands of euros in his luggage.
The other seven people were arrested in Hauts-de-Seine, not far from the western Paris park. They are suspected of managing the dozens of prostitutes brought into the country from Argentina.
Their operation allegedly involved ‘recruiting’ young boys from the province of Salta, in western Argentina, putting them up in a hotel in Buenos Aires and advising on various surgical procedures to make them more appealing to clients.
A prostitute waits for clients in the Bois de Boulogne park, western Paris, a hot-spot for prostitutes and where young Argentinian boys were allegedly forced to solicit sex by a pimp, under threat of black magic.
The surgery was allegedly carried out by an accomplice called ‘Lorena,’ the Local said.
Once trained and remodeled, the young boys were allegedly flown to France where two ‘lieutenants’ would manage them and send them to solicit sex from clients in the park.
News of the arrests in the alleged prostitution gang comes as France prepares to reform its prostitution laws.
There have been calls for sex clients to be heavily fined; prostitutes have hit back claiming this makes their work more dangerous, forced to work in more remote places.
Under current French laws, it is legal to ‘seek or offer money for sexual services’ as long as it is done without advertising.
A survey this year found there were more than 20,000 prostitutes working in France, and that six out of ten French men and women wanted brothels to be legalized.
France had 1,400 legal brothels before they were all banned in 1946. In Britain, prostitution and paying for sex are legal if the girl is over 18 and not acting under duress.
But related activities including soliciting, kerb crawling, keeping a brothel and pimping are all outlawed. Brothels are still legal in Germany, Holland and Switzerland, and tolerated in Spain.
In Europe, only Sweden and Norway have made it illegal to pay for sex.
Read more here: Transsexual prostitute ring busted by Paris cops
