Russia today + Yediot Aharonot
Sophisticated Israeli security investigations, which lasted for more than a year, revealed a scandal of human trafficking and sexual exploitation that affected foreign women who arrived in Israel.
Investigations showed that a border guard officer was involved at Ben Gurion Airport, suspected of raping women in exchange for granting entry visas.
The case, which was described as “one of the most complex files of human trafficking” in recent years, revealed an organization smuggling network behind Israeli and Brazilian figures, which collected millions of shekels by exploiting women in prostitution.
The details of the case began to be revealed when the Brazilian young woman, “A.” arrived. To Israel in July 2024. During its crossing from the airport, a border inspector stopped her, and began to ask personal questions, then asked her to wait near toilets for people with special needs. There, according to the investigation, he lured it inward, and sexually assaulted it.
Captain Ayran Asraf, deputy head of the investigative department of occupied Jerusalem police, said, “The guard used his official authority to commit atrocities,” said Captain Iran Asraf, Vice -head of the Investigations Department of occupied Jerusalem.
Bring a condom, and closed the door behind it. The victim was under a calming influence, and she did not appear for fear of deportation.
The incident was not the first. The police recorded similar cases, including the testimonies of Brazilian, Roman and Peruvian women, who were exposed to harassment and attacks inside or outside the airport, by the same suspect. In one case, a woman was taken to a car and raped her. In another, he asked two women if they had a “lover”, before trying to blackmail them sexually.
The investigation extended to reveal the smuggling network of women from Brazil to Israel, supervised by David Kaufman and Luis Kramer, two Brazil immigrants. According to the indictment, the two worked with a woman called “Paloma” in Brazil, who recruited women to work in prostitution under the cover of a “tourist visit”. The agency covered the costs, turned half of the profits to Brazil.
The profits of the network amounted to about 18 million shekels, which were not authorized to the authorities, and money was transferred by irregular means through the “transfer” system, to avoid banking tracking.
Women were overlooked on apartments and hotels in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, and some were stolen, assaulted and raped, while one of them said that one of the customers hit her after she rejected his request.
For documentation and protection, women installed small cameras in the doors of the apartments, and they recorded the aggressors to exchange their photos and warn some of them through WhatsApp groups.
The main accused is an element in the border guards, who has been arrested since May 12, and the Public Prosecution is preparing to submit an indictment against him. According to the police, he did not cooperate during the investigation until after he faced direct evidence, including what was found on his mobile phone.
For his part, Lawyer Ariel Atari, the representative of the border guard, said: “The allegations are exaggerated, and there are only unconventional allegations,” noting that “a contradiction in the testimonies of the victims remains.”
As for the lawyer of Kaufman, Moshe Gilad, he said that his client was only turning the money into the families of women, and that they came voluntarily due to difficult economic conditions, considering that prostitution itself is not a crime in Israel.
The investigation, in which the police investigators, the tax authority and the sexual crime unit participated, gathering great evidence for months, including unloading phones, reviewing cameras, and interrogating dozens of victims and suspects.
“We have succeeded in providing an integrated file linking moral crime and economic violations against the state.”.
The case bore the name “corrupt dance”, in reference to the overlapping of sexual exploitation with financial corruption within state institutions. Captain Asher stressed that “what is hurt in this case is that the accused was a representative of the authority, and he took advantage of his authority to harm those who have been to the state in search of a life opportunity.”
Grand judicial developments are expected in the coming weeks, including new indictment regulations against additional involved in the network.
