This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HELSINKI 000353 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR EUR/NB AND G/TIP 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/22/2015 
TAGS: PHUM KCRM KWMN SMIG SOCI FI
SUBJECT: POSSIBLE GEORGIAN TRAFFICKING CONNECTION WORRIES 
FINNS 
 
 
Classified By: POLOFF DAVID ALLEN SCHLAEFER FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) and (D) 
 
¶1. Summary: 
    -------- 
 
(U) Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and 
Frontier Guards announced on March 7 that they believed as 
many as 1,500 Georgian women may have been trafficked through 
Finland to destinations scattered throughout western Europe 
from 2002-2004.  According to the NBI, the operation was run 
by a Russian organized crime syndicate that arranged for 
busloads of women to enter Finland under the guise of tour 
groups.  The women had previously obtained Swedish and 
Italian tourist visas in Moscow, and had told Finnish 
Frontier Guards that they were transiting Finland on their 
way to their vacation destinations.  Several days after this 
announcement, Finnish Frontier Guards intercepted a busload 
of 48 Georgian women attempting to enter Finland at the 
Valimaa checkpoint along the Russian-Finnish border.  The 
women were taken to a refugee reception center; four men that 
were with the group were detained on suspicion of 
trafficking-in-persons.  Finnish authorities attempted to 
handle the case in a manner consistent with Finland's 
soon-to-be-published new anti-TIP National Action Plan 
(emphasizing victim's rights).  However, the subsequent 
investigation indicates that the women were not involved in 
sex trafficking, but in labor trafficking or labor smuggling. 
 As the women refused to cooperate with Finnish authorities 
and asked to return to Georgia, Finnish authorities arranged 
a chartered flight to Tbilisi (the Russian Government 
reportedly denied them transit en route home).  This case has 
served to heighten Finnish public awareness of trafficking, 
and has caused both officials and editorial writers to 
comment that perhaps the GoF has erred in past statements 
that trafficking is not an issue in Finland.  End Summary. 
 
 
A Rude Awakening 
---------------- 
 
¶2. (U) The GoF in the past has often maintained that 
trafficking-in-persons is not a significant problem in 
Finland.  This attitude has slowly changed over the past two 
years, as evidenced by the Finns enthusiastically hosting 
with Embassy Helsinki a major conference on child-trafficking 
in 2003, an OSCE conference on victim assistance in 2004, and 
a NATO conference on combating TIP just two weeks ago. 
Finland has also passed legislation making TIP a criminal 
offense (Fall 2004) and is on the verge of publishing a new 
National Action Plan aimed at creation of a victim-centered 
approach to trafficking-in-persons.  Concurrent with these 
initiatives has been a growing recognition that there are 
women trafficked to and especially through Finland, and that 
trafficking may exist where before Finnish authorities saw 
only organized prostitution or smuggling.  Nonetheless, 
revelations over the past two weeks of large-scale 
trafficking of Georgian women has caught Finnish authorities 
off guard and served as a rude awakening to many in the 
Finnish public. 
 
¶3. (U) Finland's FBI-equivalent, the National Bureau of 
Investigation (NBI), announced on March 7 that as many as 
1,500  young Georgian women may have been trafficked through 
Finland to destinations in Western Europe.  It is thought 
that many of these women were destined to work as prostitutes 
in the red light districts of cities such as Brussels, 
Amsterdam and Berlin, although some have been part of labor 
trafficking or smuggling operations.  In each case, the women 
entered Finland at the Valimaa checkpoint along the 
Finnish-Russian border on the road from St. Petersburg.  They 
had Georgian passports with visas from either the Italian or 
Swedish Embassies in Moscow, and had represented themselves 
as tour groups to the Frontier Guards at the border 
checkpoint.  The Guards let the buses pass since the women 
possessed valid travel visas for EU countries in the Schengen 
area.  However, the Frontier Guards recorded the bus's 
registration and license plates.  Subsequently, Greece 
reported to the EU that tour buses were leaving Greece for 
"return trips" to Georgia with only a handful of passengers 
on them.  Finnish authorities, taking note of the Greek 
report, confirmed that these were indeed the same buses that 
had earlier entered Finland from Russia full of female 
passengers. 
 
¶4. (U) The announcement garnered considerable media attention 
in Finland.  The Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's major daily 
newspaper, ran an editorial acknowledging that the State 
Department's TIP report had been correct in pointing out that 
trafficking was a problem in Finland.  The paper wryly 
commented that the U.S. appeared to know more about what was 
happening at Finland's border than Finns did.  Major Ilkka 
Herranen, a regional Commander in Finland's Frontier Guard, 
told the press that the Georgia revelations gave reason to 
reconsider Finland's official position on trafficking. 
According to Herranen, "In the past, (Finnish) authorities 
have generally refused to see Finland as a country of transit 
or destination of trafficking human beings.  Now we have to 
admit that Finland is at least a transit country and possibly 
a country of destination to some extent." 
 
Another Busload 
--------------- 
 
¶5. (U) Only a few days after the initial announcement about 
the possible Georgian trafficking connection, a busload of 48 
women and 4 men was intercepted at the Valimaa checkpoint by 
the Frontier Guard.  The bus was registered to a Swedish tour 
agency, and the passengers fit the profile of the previous 
incidents.  The women all had valid visas issued by the 
Swedish Embassy in Moscow.  A man claiming to be a tour guide 
told Finnish authorities that the women were on a chartered 
tour with a destination of an inexpensive "Italian market" 
for shopping.  When asked why they were entering Finland, the 
man said their itinerary was Tbilisi, Moscow, Helsinki, 
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, 
Turkey, to Georgia, but was unable to provide any explanation 
for the roundabout trip.  The women had little money, and 
many seemed to have no idea what their itinerary was, 
although they all appeared to have been coached to state that 
an "Italian market" was their final destination.  The 
Frontier Guards detained the four men on suspicion of 
trafficking-in-persons, and took the women into protective 
custody. 
 
¶6. (U) In the past, the Frontier Guard would normally have 
denied entry to the women and turned the bus back around 
toward Russia.  However, in anticipation of a new GoF 
National Action Plan on trafficking aimed at creating a 
victim-centered approach to TIP in Finland, the Guards took 
the women to a refugee-asylum center run by the Ministry for 
Labor in Joutseno, also along the border but some 150 
kilometers north of the Valimaa checkpoint.  Consultations 
among the MFA, Labor, Interior, and Social Affairs ministries 
led to an early decision to treat the women as trafficking 
victims and open an investigation into the case.  The Finnish 
press widely reported that the women were presumably being 
trafficked to work as prostitutes elsewhere in Western 
Europe.  However, the subsequent police investigation 
determined that it was more likely the women were being 
trafficked or smuggled for labor; most of the women were in 
their 30's, 40's and 50's, and none of them were younger than 
26 (the oldest being over 60). 
 
¶7. (U) The women declined to provide details of their 
situation to investigators and repeatedly asked to return to 
Russia, despite assurances that they would not be deported if 
they wished to cooperate with investigators and remain in 
Finland.  After one week in the reception center, the 
Interior Ministry determined that there were no grounds to, 
in effect, keep the women detained against their will in 
Finland.  Since Russian authorities refused to grant transit 
rights for the bus to drive to Georgia, a chartered flight 
was arranged to return the group to Tbilisi.  According to 
Finnish authorities, Georgian media was reporting that the 
women were prostitutes bound for Western Europe.  A Finnish 
official accompanied the group on the return flight to 
discuss the investigation with Georgian authorities and to 
dispel the Georgian media's notion that the women were sex 
workers so that they would not be stigmatized upon their 
return (a fear that some of the women had expressed).  The 
detained men were released for lack of evidence. 
 
Learning Curve 
-------------- 
 
¶8. (C) The exact nature of the current case remains unclear; 
Finnish police report that since they could not ascertain the 
conditions in which the women would have been working had 
they not been intercepted, they are unsure if the case 
involves trafficking or smuggling of illegal immigrants.  The 
case did afford the Finns an opportunity to test new 
procedures for investigating trafficking, however. 
Coordination among the various Finnish agencies involved was 
not always smooth. In particular, senior officials at both 
the Labor and Foreign Affairs Ministries told Poloff that 
they were disappointed with the reaction of the Ministry for 
Social Affairs and Health (MSAH).  Finland's new National 
Action Plan calls for the MSAH to play a key role in victim 
assistance.  According to the MoL and MFA, the MSAH "hid 
behind a lack of resources" and refused to take 
responsibility for the Georgian women; this refusal led to 
the Labor Ministry's offer to shelter the women at the asylum 
reception center as long as necessary.  The head of Finland's 
inter-agency TIP working group still believed that such 
difficulties were to be expected, and that the GoF had 
learned valuable lessons from the case about the need for 
better communication and coordination among the affected 
agencies as well as about interview techniques with the women 
and their handlers.  Interior Minister Rajamaki also used the 
opportunity to publicly speculate on the need for new law 
offering residency to those who cooperate as witnesses in 
trafficking investigations. 
WEISBERG