Czech, German police bust sex trafficking ring smuggling Vietnamese women into EU

Police in Czechia, working in close cooperation with German authorities, arrested three suspects this week in connection with an international human trafficking ring accused of smuggling women from Southeast Asia to Germany, the National Centre Against Organized Crime (NCOZ) has revealed. The concerning development brings to light the dark nature of human trafficking in Czechia and the EU.

German news agency dpa reported that Czech and German police carried out coordinated raids as part of an investigation into an organized group smuggling women from Vietnam into the EU and forcing them into prostitution. Officers in both countries searched over three dozen buildings and detained multiple individuals, according to federal police in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Czech detainees—two men, aged 28 and 54, and a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman—face charges of human trafficking and facilitating illegal border crossings. The NCOZ conducted four house searches and four additional searches in the Plzen (west Bohemia) and Ústí nad Labem (north Bohemia) regions, seizing property worth several million crowns, said NCOZ.

According to German police, the three suspects will be extradited to Germany. Czech authorities arrested them based on a European arrest warrant and coordinated closely with German police in Halle.

German police reported that the trafficking group smuggled women from Vietnam into the EU, with raids conducted in 25 locations across several German cities, including Chemnitz, Halle, Gera, Essen, Dortmund, and Kassel.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser commented on the operation, saying: “The controls are working,” referring to police checks at all land borders introduced in September 2023. Since then, authorities have detained over 2,000 human traffickers, according to the German Interior Ministry.

The recent arrests and raids highlight the scale and cross-border complexity of human trafficking operations in Europe—and put a spotlight on the EU’s and Czechia’s issues with human trafficking. 

A recently released report from the European Commission showed a 20.5 percent increase in registered victims between 2021–22, with sexual and labour exploitation being the most prevalent forms, and a growing trend toward labour exploitation in Western and Southern Europe. 

Convictions for trafficking crimes rose by 40 percent, with men making up the majority of suspects and EU citizens accounting for 81 percent of prosecutions. 

Director of Prague-based, anti-human trafficking non-governmental organization (NGO) L'Chaim Yael Schoultz told Expats.cz that girls from Nigeria, Romania, and Bulgaria are often trapped in sex work in Czechia. Oftentimes, debt—either belonging to the victim’s family, the trafficker, or the victim themselves—is the main factor.

The Walk Free human rights NGO in a 2023 report issued three recommendations to the Czech government to help combat trafficking: criminalizing forced labor in line with international conventions; Criminalizing commercial sexual exploitation of children in the same manner; and increasing the legal age of marriage for males and females to 18.