How the Chinese criminal network Tian Xia She operated: Young girls prostituted as slaves and minors selling drugs

It was all about business and they knew how to get the most out of each person, whether they were young girls tricked into travelling to Spain in search of a better future, or minors without roots who started dealing drugs and who were promised a career within “the family.” That “family” was the criminal organization Tian Xia She, which according to police translators means “the world.” This Chinese mafia was dismantled last December in an operation that resulted in four of its leaders being sent to prison and 33 of its victims freed. The investigation, which took two years, targeted a “hierarchical and ramified” mafia that wove international networks to amass money through the sexual exploitation of women, illegal immigration, or extortion of hospitality businesses, among other crimes. The profit from this criminal activity, “a huge amount of money” that investigators estimate in “the millions,” was mainly moved in cash. It was either returned to China to be laundered or loaned to the Chinese community in Spain under usurious conditions.

Investigations into the trafficking of women, which are already complicated from the start due to the intimidation exercised over the victims by their captors, become more complex if they are also immersed in networks originating in China, a “very hermetic” world, in which numerous security measures are taken and which investigators approached by means of surveillance, monitoring, and technical means.

“It is very difficult to get a statement or a complaint from these women. They are afraid, they don’t know the country, they don’t know the language, they have a lot of problems communicating with us, for fear of the organization, of what they can do to them, and for fear of being deported, and of receiving treatment that is very different later on,” explains an investigator attached to Operation Samoa, directed by the Spanish National Police and the Tax Agency with the cooperation of Europol. Once detected and identified, the victims are assisted by NGOs that help them find places to live and offer them psychological and medical care and a way out for the future, far from the sphere of the criminal organization that exploited them.

The 33 victims of Tian Xia She, recruited in China, Vietnam, and Thailand, had several common characteristics: they were young, or looked very young, and they needed money. Their point of arrival in Spain, and that of other migrants for whom the network facilitated illegal immigration, was an apartment they called “snake nest.” “Depending on whether they were in debt or not, because there were people who paid €20,000 or €30,000 ($20,793-$31,187) to the organization depending on the country of destination, they were housed there waiting to receive false documentation,” explained sources from the National Police’s Central Unit against Illegal Immigration Networks and Document Forgery (UCRIF). These passports and visas were falsified in a laboratory in Madrid, which has now been shut down, and when they were handed over the organization’s victims continued on their way to the USA or Central America. Those who could not pay their debt were sent to the criminal network’s brothels until it was settled.

Those victims who were put to work in brothels that operated in Madrid, Barcelona, and Zaragoza were sexually exploited in conditions of slavery, with absolute availability, without the freedom to move, forced to have unprotected sex, and in some cases, to undergo abortions. The initial debt that these women acquired was €10,000 ($10,408), but if they also left their regularization in the hands of the gang, in some cases it could rise to €50,000 ($52,043), according to other sources involved in the investigation.

The ringleaders’ criminal operations had various branches, such as the sale of a drug called “God’s water,” which is used as a sexual inhibitor in brothels and karaoke bars frequented by the Asian community. The dose, which comes in bags like wet wipes, fetches prices of €300 ($312). “They used minors and then made them believe that they belonged to the organization, to the family, and that they had to climb the ranks. This gave them impunity. They only ensured that everything went well, and they got richer,” explains the researcher. The suppliers of this synthetic drug, which came from the Netherlands, were also Asian.

A web of illegal businesses

Extortion was another part of their activities. It was related to supposed security services that were offered to karaoke bars or brothels, but which in reality consisted of intimidating the owners into giving them 20% of their businesses and letting them sell drugs or arrange dates with the women they sexually exploited. “They imposed a lot of fear and respect in the Chinese community,” say these sources, who explain that they ended up taking control of the establishments. If they received a refusal, they forced the owners to close down, even beating them, or creating problems for the running of their businesses. In some cases, they forced them to sell at a low price and then took over the reins. Although the investigation began in 2022, the police believe that extortion activities in Catalonia had been gaining ground since at least 2018.

The web of interconnected illegal businesses in this network began to unravel after a complaint was filed with the National Police in Zaragoza, which took over the investigation with agents from the Customs Surveillance Department of Aragón. “The organization was so large that we had to branch it out and it ended up becoming a national operation,” explain sources from the Tax Agency. Its agents were in charge of analyzing the economic, financial, and patrimonial capacity of all the members. Most of the 30 arrests were made in Barcelona (13) and Madrid (12), although there were also three people detained in Zaragoza and two more in Toledo and La Rioja. The agents closed down two of the apartments they operated as brothels. “They move millions,” add these sources, who emphasize the complexity of the organization and its transnational nature. “It was a wheel; they had everything worked out to extract money, a cut, and benefits from each of the people they brought in.”

In 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Ministry of the Interior recorded more than 600 victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Prostitution was traditionally found in clubs in Spain, but has moved to more private spaces, such as apartments, chalets, or tourist rental homes, sources from the Centre for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organised Crime (CITCO) told EL PAÍS last November. This change allows for greater mobility of potential victims and makes detection more difficult.

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