Police raid hostess bars in search for exploited Ukrainian women

Police in Mallorca inspected hostess bars, looking for Ukrainian women who may be exploited

Fifteen bars were inspected. | Policia Nacional

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma09/04/2022 07:55

Overnight on Thursday, the National Police in Palma inspected fifteen hostess bars. The main purpose of what was a five-hour-long operation was to check if Ukrainian women who have fled the war were being sexually exploited.

No Ukrainian women were found, but the police are not ruling that some may have been hidden in safe houses rather than on the premises. Suspicions have been raised as the result of an arrest in Madrid and the discovery of two Ukrainian girls under the age of 17. There is evidence in the capital of women from Ukraine having fallen into the hands of pimps.

The Thursday night operation involved searches of clubs in Playa de Palma, Plaza de las Columnas, Joan Miró, and S'Aigo Dolça. In the case of the latter, in the vicinity of the Paseo Marítimo, there are four hostess bars near each other. The searches were conducted simultaneously so that there could be no warning.

The identities of ninety people were checked. All were found to have their documentation in order. Most of the women were Bulgarian, Romanian and South American.