Direct Links to Trafficking of Women and Girls Trafficking in persons flourishes in conditions of state complicity and with the involvement of state officials. Human Rights Watch uncovered evidence of such corruption among local police in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A small number of police officers participated in trafficking directly as owners or staff of bars and brothels. Finally, some trafficking victims alleged that officials in the foreigners' departments in some police stations engaged in document fraud, facilitating trafficking.
Direct police involvement came to light through the testimony of trafficking victims who escaped from brothels. In a criminal case in Doboj, a Ukrainian trafficking victim testified that she and a friend were purchased in November by two men, one of whom was a police officer.
The police officer and his colleague drove the women to a bar called "Silent Night," gave them condoms, and assigned them to rooms "especially designated for sex. The local football soccer club, which boasted several police officers as members, owned the nightclub into which the women were trafficked.
In one of the rare cases in which an official faced criminal charges for trafficking, a Banja Luka police officer, Goran Vasilic, in received a sentence of one year and three months for transporting women across international borders for the purpose of forcing them into prostitution, in violation of Article of the RS criminal code.
