Re: Trafiku Njerezor
Ja ky eshte "mbreti i makrove" ne Maqedoni- Shqipetar! ( tani me ne burg por se shpejti do te lirohet...)
STRUGA, Macedonia, Jan. 2 — For a man wanted on 17 criminal counts, including counterfeiting, robbery and the enslavement of women, Dilaver Bojku doesn’t appear overly worried. Driving a new Audi, clad in black and draped in Versace jewelry, the man police call the kingpin of human trafficking in the Balkans lives freely here on Macedonia’s western flank.
MACEDONIAN OFFICIALS SAY Bojku, widely known by his nickname, “Leku,” is very nearly untouchable — able to keep local police and prosecutors at bay with cash kickbacks from his smuggling empire. Smug in his lair in the region where he was born and snacking on freshly caught trout from nearby Lake Okhrid, Bojku recently discounted the litany of charges the Macedonian government has lodged against him.
“I’m a simple man,” he said. “It’s always, ‘Leku, Leku, Leku.’ ”
Right or not, “Leku” has become a catchword for much that is wrong in the Balkans, where crime and corruption flourish after a decade of ethnic conflicts. And here in western Macedonia, a region that almost erupted into a war between minority Albanians and majority Macedonians a year ago, Leku’s name strikes fear in the hearts of dozens — and perhaps hundreds — of victims of human trafficking.
“He’s one of the main guys,” said a Western law enforcement official working in the region.
Corruption stalls Balkan recovery
LEKU LIVES LARGE
Bojku likes to live large. By his own grinning admission, he has three “wives” and a number of consorts. On a recent day, he swept into his hotel in a floor-length leather coat. His 16-year old son brought him a glass of juice from the bar, where leggy Serb dancers were warming up for a night of cabaret.
The Swiss-style Hotel Bern — influenced by the six years Bojku years spent working on construction sites in Switzerland — is his pride and joy. He says his dream was to become an architect, a plan cut short because he didn’t go to college. The Hotel Bern bears his signature style, with lots of mirrors and marble.
Down the road in the village of Velesta, Bojku opened another bar, called Expresso. In Struga, on the north end of picturesque Lake Okhrid, he owns a night club called Kiss Me.
According to Bojku, he was once at odds with the law, serving two sentences for illegally employing foreign girls to “dance” at his popular nightclubs. “Now everything is legal,” he says, “and all the girls have working papers.”
So what about all the women who say Bojku beat them and, in more than one case, raped them to force them into prostitution?
“They are just talking bad about me,” he said of the numerous accusations that form the backbone of the Macedonian government’s charges of human slavery.
ANOTHER STORY
“Of course he’ll say that,” said Natalia, a Moldovan woman who says she was bought sold by Leku. “But he’s lying to you. He just doesn’t want to go to jail.”
Twenty-two-year-old Natalia is one of a chorus of trafficking victims who say Bojku is a demonic crime boss who forces girls into the sex trade. If they resist, they say he beats them into submission and threatens to harm their families back home.
During a year and a half working in western Macedonia, where smugglers dumped her after promising her a well-paid job in Italy, Natalia was forced to sleep with hundreds of men. Brothel owners rotated Natalia and other girls through dozens of bars in the region.
Then one day she found herself standing before Bojku.
“He paid 18,000 euros ($18,000) for six girls, myself included. There were four Moldovans, one Romanian and one Ukrainian.”
HUMAN ‘REFUND’
Bojku took the women back to Velesta, the village where he was born, but Natalia soon realized she was pregnant — the result of hundreds of sexual encounters without condoms, which clients refused to wear. Leku was furious.
“He took me to have an abortion,” Natalia said. “He paid the doctor 50 euros.” Then Bojku sent her back to her former “owner.”
“He got a refund,” Natalia said. “3,000 euros.”
Stories like Natalia’s are repeated by dozens of women who say they hope their testimony will one day put Bojku behind bars.
Sixteen-year-old Loredana left her native Bucharest in January, chasing a dream of working in Western Europe. But like thousands of naive Romanian girls, she ended up locked in a brothel in Macedonia. In Bojku’s Expresso bar, “there was one client every hour, unless someone took me for the whole night,” Loredana said.
‘I AM A WONDERFUL BOSS’
Bojku denies the claims. He offers phone numbers of Russian women who have worked in his club. “They will tell you I am a wonderful boss,” he said. Reached by phone in Russia, they spoke in glowing terms of Bojku, though they admitted he had phoned them first.
Apparently preparing for his day in court, and irked by a reporter’s questions, Bojku produced a dozen notarized statements from women — former “dancers” at his clubs — who blame their ill treatment on corrupt local police. In the documents, they say Bojku rescued them. If there was prostitution, Bojku says, it wasn’t his fault.
“These girls run away from their fathers and mothers. Then they run away from me. I offer for them to work as waitresses. But they want more money. And they want to sleep with men. It’s in their nature to prostitute themselves.”
Bojku says his dancers gave their statements willingly. However, one of the signatures is that of a 33-year-old Moldovan who told MSNBC.com in September 2001 that Bojku held her as a sex slave and paid off police to issue false Macedonian work documents. “He told me to forget any thought I had of making money or returning home,” Luisa said.
Bojku now says he has quit the business of employing foreign women altogether, though he admits that “Moldovan and Ukrainian women bring in more clients.”
“I rented out my clubs for the last two years,” he said. “I’m not in the business anymore.”
Loredana and Natalia say they were working for Bojku in Velesta as recently as January and October, respectively. Loredana was wounded in a firefight that broke out during a police raid on Velesta.
“I would love to seem him dead, but not because somebody shoots him,” she said by phone from a Bucharest shelter, where she is recovering from her wounds and resuming her studies. “I want personally to be the one who shoots him.”
Preston Mendenhall is MSNBC.com’s international editor.
