The 2004 Ukrainian child pornography raids occurred a few months before the First Orange Revolution, when police in Ukraine raided a softcore child pornography ring operating in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Simferopol. The ring had operated since 2001 and used a modeling agency as a front.
The Crime Investigation Department of the Ministry for the Interior conducted the raids. The deputy head of the department, Vitaly Yarema, said that the bank accounts of the agency, containing hundreds of thousands of dollars, had been frozen.
The raids were conducted after a joint investigation between Ukrainian police and Interpol. In 2005, the United States Department of State announced that there was further cooperation between Ukrainian police and other law enforcement agencies internationally.
The investigation following the raids was completed by 6 April 2005.
Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Vitaly Yarema, deputy head of the Interior Ministry crime investigation department, as saying police were questioning about 15 people about the agency, which operated for three years across the country.
Police said the agency had attracted around 1,500 girls aged from eight to 16 to their offices in the capital Kiev, Kharkiv in the east and Simferopol in the south.
"The pictures (of the girls) were then sent to the United States and Canada via Internet channels," Yarema said.
Police also froze the bank accounts of the agency, which earned "hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars" in the past three years.
UNIAN news agency said police confiscated video equipment, computers, images of children, financial documents and a Porsche belonging to the group organizer, a Ukrainian in his mid-20s.
Ukrainian police worked on the case for several months with the FBI.
Criminal group involves 1,500 under-age Ukrainian girls in porn business with parents' knowledge |
Disguised as a modeling agency, the firm rented a studio in the center of Kiev
Ukrainian law-enforcement authorities have recently filed a criminal case against a local company, which was producing and distributing child pornography. Investigators determined that over 1,500 under-age girls had been involved in the illegal porn business.
The chairman of the department for struggle with human trafficking crimes, Mikhail Andreyenko, told reporters on Wednesday, April 06, 2005 that the preliminary investigation on the case had been completed. The exact court and the date of the hearings have not been coordinated yet.
The Criminal Investigation Department of the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry detected and neutralized the criminal group in July of 2004. Disguised as a fashion model agency, the group was making pornographic photographs and films with participation of teenage girls, from 8 to 16 years old. The criminals uploaded the video footage and pictures on foreign pornsites. The Ukrainian police arrested the organizers of the “modeling business.”
The criminals rented a studio in the center of Kiev, the Ukraine's capital, in which video and photo shoots were conducted, Interfax reports. The illegal firm had its branch offices in other Ukrainian cities, Kharkov and Simferopol. It turned out that the criminals were telling girls' parents that their children were working in the modeling business. The girls were paid from $10 to $40 for a photo session.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry said that the majority of girls' parents knew, or had a suspicion of their children's “work,” although no one went to the police to report the crime, Interfax said.
The so-called modeling agency existed for three years. The firm was advertising its activity in the Ukrainian media, including newspapers. The firm's monthly income was estimated at about $100 thousand, investigators said.
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