By PATRICIA KANE
IT was the sudden appearance above the front door of a CCTV camera, its red light slowly blinking as it recorded the comings and goings from the flat, which first raised the suspicions of the letting agent as he knocked twice to gain entry. There to carry out a routine inspection of the property in the heart of one of Glasgow’s most affluent retail and dining districts, the agent had made several unsuccessful attempts to reach its ‘tenant’ – businessman Jagpal Singh, who had leased it over 13 years to house, he claimed, some of the employees working at his city laundrette.
But as property manager James Taylor, a former police inspector, used his key to open the door and go in, he could hardly believe the scene before him.
Two chairs from the dining room in the furnished Merchant City apartment had been placed in the hallway ‘like a dentist’s waiting room’. Standing terrified in front of him were two young Chinese women, both wearing negligees.
The astonished 65-year-old could see the double bed in one of the bedrooms had towels placed on top, and red material had been draped across the window to block out light in a crass attempt to
Initially, I was doing cleaning, cooking, shopping for food
provide a more ‘ambient’ atmosphere. In the second bedroom, he found a Scottish man lying bare-chested on the double bed in the corner, his suit neatly folded on a chair.
Reporting later to his boss the sequence of events he had witnessed in the Albion Street flat in August 2018, he could never have imagined that his evidence would one day play a vital part in smashing one of the city’s most prolific human trafficking rings.
But this week, at the High Court in Glasgow, four of the ringleaders – Singh, 52, Donglin Zhang, 48, along with Vlassis Ntaoulias, 33, and Boonsong Wannas, 62 – are expected to receive lengthy sentences after they were convicted earlier this year of a string of charges, stretching from the day of Mr Taylor’s visit until February 2020, when police officers secured information to raid seven addresses in the city linked to their criminal activities.
The success of the undercover operation marks a breakthrough for the Glasgow Human Trafficking Unit (GHTU). But with statistics showing human trafficking for sex is rising in the UK, those pursuing the criminal gangs stress it is
not just a city problem – it touches many towns and villages too.
Detective Superintendent Donna Duffy, the officer responsible for setting up the GHTU, said: ‘Trafficking and modern slavery can happen anywhere.
‘It could be going on in any community so, for us, the key part of it is the community themselves. They are the eyes and ears out there and if they see people moving into a flat, and if there’s a lot of activity and they’re just not happy with it, that information is crucial... that’s what led us to our first victim and led to a bigger investigation.’
During the High Court trial, one of the victims – who cannot be named for legal reasons but had been a hairdresser in China – gave harrowing testimony, with the help of a Mandarin interpreter, of how she arrived in Glasgow blissfully unaware of her fate, having been encouraged to seek work in Scotland following online chats with a woman using the name ‘Linda’.
With her visa sorted out by a third party, on September 6, 2018, she flew into Glasgow Airport, where she was collected by a Chinese man and woman and taken to an apartment in the city.
She told the court that her passport had been taken from her and she remained for a few weeks with another Chinese woman who did massage work, adding: ‘Initially, I was doing cleaning, cooking, shopping for food for a period of time – I can’t remember how long.
‘They didn’t pay me or mention paying me, they didn’t pay me anyway. All the money was taken away, I know I was trafficked.’
The following month, however, she was told she would have to move to another apartment in the city, where she would live alone.
But on her second night in the new flat, she said her male and female ‘bosses’ arrived with a man and told her they were leaving for a short time to go shopping.
She said: ‘They didn’t come back for a while and I did not speak English. Then the client told me I had to provide him with sexual services. I was going to go out and I realised the door was locked from the outside, so I rang her.’
She was told she ‘had to do this’ as the client had paid. The woman added: ‘I said no and she said if you don’t listen to me... I will make sure you never go back to China.’
Later she was forced to meet men ‘every day’ at the apartment or in different hotels. There was also no ‘fixed amount’ of visits per day, with ‘sometimes just a couple, quite a lot some days, some days no one.’
It was only when a sympathetic client ‘helped’ her to leave the apartment by giving her a few hundred pounds and waiting for a taxi with her that she finally managed to escape their clutches.
The court heard a second woman was also ‘delivered as if she was a piece of property or some kind of commodity’. Singh took her to his flat and treated her like an object for him and his clients to use and sexually abuse. Singh and Ntaoulias exchanged messages about ‘new fresh Chinese girls’.
Charities such as the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance, founded in 2004 to support women trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, have seen a steady rise in the number of victims referred to them from all of Scotland’s 32 local authorities.
Its co-ordinator, Bronagh Andrew, said: ‘We’ve had referrals from Caithness down to Annan, as well as small villages in Clackmannanshire.
We’ve had referrals from Caithness down to Annan
Trafficking is also not just about foreign women – there are concerns about Scottish women in situations that would meet the tariff for human trafficking.’
Following their conviction, Judge Douglas Brown told the traffickers: ‘It is highly likely there will be high sentences of imprisonment.’
The verdict was welcomed by Det Supt Duffy, who said her unit are ‘celebrating’ their hard work paying off. She said: ‘This conviction sends out a message to the other criminal gangs involved in this despicable crime that Police Scotland takes this seriously.
‘I want this case to also be a positive message to victims that you can trust us, you can speak to us, we’ll keep you safe and, crucially, dismantle the organisation that put you in this position.’