The National Investigations Inspectorate hunted down three criminal groups dealing with trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation. The heads of the groups were arrested by the police and later placed under house arrest, IPN reports.

In the first case, the criminal group was headed by an Italian aged 33 and his partner, a Moldovan woman aged 25. They recruited young women and took them to a Chisinau apartment. There, the women, among whom two minors, were constrained psychologically to provide sexual services for money. The young women are from socially deprived families from villages.

In another case, the police arrested a 35-year-old citizen of Bulgaria suspected of trafficking in children for being sexually exploited abroad. Last August, the suspect recruited a girl aged 17 promising her she will be able to work as a babysitter in Turkey for US$1,000a month. His accomplice, a woman aged 32, obtained the consent of the girl’s mother to taking her abroad. The girl was taken to Turkey and forced to prostitute herself in an apartment there.

In the third case, a woman aged 56 is accused of organizing a procuring network in Chisinau. The woman worked as part of a group headed by Alexandru Covali, alias Salun, who was earlier sentenced to 19 years in jail for trafficking in children for sexual exploitation and for procuring. In 2013, she recruited young women, including minors, for providing sexual services in a house in Chisinau municipality.