A Romanian national is set to stand trial on charges linked to human trafficking and controlling prostitution in Belfast. A judge made the order on Friday, after Valentin Rada (36) appeared at Befast’s Magistrates Court for a preliminary enquiry hearing.
Rada, with an address at McMaster street in the city, faces a total of ten charges, which include three counts of human trafficking and two charges of controlling prostitution for gain, The Irish News reports.
The accused faces further allegations related to keeping a brothel, as well as possessing, transferring and removing criminal property, the newspaper reports.
Two years ago, in June 2021, Rada was arrested in Belfast following a two-year investigation into a suspected crime gang involved in the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women in Northern Ireland.
Rada was detained alongside another man on 16th June 2021, as part of a joint investigation between the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Romanian authorities. A total of nine other suspects were arrested during searches conducted over the same time period in Romania, with Romanian police seizing £10,000 in cash, jewellery, cars, mobile phones, bank cards, ammunition and drugs.
Rada, who had a separate address in the city at the time, was further accused of brothel keeping and acquiring criminal property, but he denied all charges. Prosecutors claimed that Rada was “secretly recorded telling an associate that he disfigured a woman by beating her to a pulp,” the Irish News reported at the time.
The High Court heard that Rada allegedly boasted that he “lives like a lord” in Northern Ireland, with the prosecution making the claim that Rada had “seduced” his alleged victim and brought her from Bucharest to work in the sex trade.
The new charges cover a five and a half year period between January 2016 and June 2021, the Irish News reports. During the short hearing, Rada confirmed he understood the allegations. He declined to call any witnesses to give evidence at this stage.
District Judge Steven Keown backed prosecution submissions that Rada has a case to answer, and confirmed that the accused is set to stand trial at Belfast Crown Court.
He was released on continuing bail, to appear again for his arraignment at a future date, which is to be fixed.
In November, an Garda Siochana and the PSNI raided 27 brothels across Northern Ireland in a multi organisational operation targeting human traffickers.
And according to the provisional crime figures released by the Gardaí in March, the number of human trafficking offences last year showed an increase of 31% on 2021, and were more than twice the number in 2019. 2021 had also seen an increase of 50% on 2020.
Earlier this month, a report from the US State Department claimed that Ireland is failing to meet the “minimum standards” for the elimination of human trafficking.
According to the 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, “The Government of Ireland does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,” though the report acknowledges that the state is taking steps to improve its handling of the matter.
“The [Irish] government has never convicted a trafficker for labour trafficking,” the report states.
.It also pointed out that: “Courts did not convict any traffickers in 2022, a decrease compared with the conviction of three traffickers in 2021 and one trafficker in 2020.”
The report adds that before 2021, there were no human trafficking convictions for at least 7 years in a row.
“Prior to the June 2021 convictions, the government had not convicted any traffickers under the anti-trafficking law for at least seven years, despite formally identifying more than 500 trafficking victims during that time”.
It also made the claim that the prevalence of human trafficking in Ireland is “likely higher than official statistics report”.