DIICOT (Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism) has detained 31 people – 22 men and nine women – accused of forming an organized criminal group, human trafficking, pimping and money laundering.

The men and women are part of the Pian and Purcel clans.

Of the detained people, 19 will be taken to the Bucharest Court on Thursday with a proposal for preventive arrest, of which one man is arrested in another case. House arrest is requested for the other six people.

DIICOT announced that, following the searches carried out on Wednesday at the two clans, sums of money in different currencies (lei, euros, US dollars, pounds sterling and Swiss francs) were discovered and seized, with a total value estimated at 250,000 euros, edged weapons, airsoft guns, jewelry, watches, documents, various quantities of vegetable, crystalline and powdery substances currently undergoing expert examination, as well as other means of evidence.

The precautionary seizure measure was also ordered on four luxury cars.

Members of the two clans are accused of recruiting young women from Romania, using the loverboy method, after which they transported them to European countries, where they forced them to prostitute themselves.

Thus, the young women were recruited through deception and the simulation of feelings of love, which created states of emotional dependence in them, after which they were transported and housed in various locations in Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but also in Romania, where, including through acts of psychological and physical coercion, they were determined to practice prostitution to the benefit of the clans.

AGERPRES