genderberg.com - Russian crime boss arrested on sex trafficking

By Anthony M. DeStefano
STAFF WRITER

March 18, 2005, 7:08 PM EST

A reputed crime boss from the former Soviet Union has been arrested on charges he ran a brutal sex trafficking ring in Brooklyn, officials said Friday.

Asker Mammedov, 31, was ordered held without bail Friday by a federal magistrate in Brooklyn after FBI agents accused him of importing women from Azerbaijan and forcing them to work for little or no pay as prostitutes.

Mammedov, also known as "Osgar Mammedov," allegedly worked for the security detail of the office of the president in Azerbaijan before he emigrated to the United States sometime after 1995, according to an arrest warrant affidavit unsealed Friday.

Sex trafficking is a hot law enforcement issue with the Bush Administration and the Mammedov case is the second major prosecution started in Brooklyn in the last year. Azerbaijan is cooperating with the U.S. Department of State generally on human and narcotics trafficking issues but officials wouldn't say if that government played a role in the latest case.

A confidential informant told investigators that Mammedov had worked in a prostitution business located on East 12th Street in Brooklyn around 2002 and at that time stated he could bring in women from Azerbaijan, the affidavit said. The informant said Mammedov had been involved in organized crime in the former Soviet Union.

The court document stated that Mammedov brought in a number of women, one of whom was approximately 16 or 17 years old. The informant said that Mammedov falsey told the women they would be allowed to keep 50 percent of the profits they generated but kept most of the money for himself, giving them only $40 a day for living expenses, according to the affidavit. Court records further alleged that Mammedov seized the women's passports and told them their families in Azerbaijan would be harmed if they ran away.

Another informant, a woman who worked as a prostitute for Mammedov for about a year said he promised she could make up to $40,000 a year but then hit her with a bill for $12,000 in travel expenses, court papers stated. The women told investigators she only earned $1,200 in the year she worked and charged that Mammedov forced her to have sex with him, investigators stated.

The woman, identified in court documents as "CS-2," secretly taped a prostitute who told said Mammedov stated the sex worker was his "property" and couldn't change her hair style without his permission. Another prostitute confided to the informant that she was so pained by a vaginal cyst that she considered suicide because Mammedov wanted her to keep working, the affidavit stated.

Mammedov will have a bail hearing Wednesday. He is charged with violating federal human trafficking laws passed in 2000.

Origionally published www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-rus0319,0,7146811.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-crime