A Nigerian woman, Joy Jeff has been extradited to Rome where she will serve a 13 years jail term for operating a prostitution ring in Italy.
Joy, 48, had been declared wanted since 2010 for charges bordering on criminal conspiracy, enslavement, trafficking in people, exploitation of prostitution and other offenses but got extradited on Wednesday, according to Italian Police.
Reuters confirmed that Joy was among the few women on Italy’s most-wanted list, with the Italian police describing her as a prominent figure in the Nigerian mafia.
According to a statement released by the Press Office of the Italian National Police on Wednesday, investigations into Joy’s crimes date back to 2007, when she oversaw cross-border prostitution business among Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
A treaty signed by Nigeria and Italy in 2020 facilitated the extradition.
She was arrested in Nigeria on June 4, 2022, on an international warrant issued by Italy.
Investigators in Ancona, Italy’s easternmost city, said Jeff was a key figure in trafficking women to Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, where they were forced into prostitution through violence and threats.
The woman was flown from Nigeria’s capital, Abuja to Ciampino airport in Rome, where she was taken away in a wheelchair by police, according to a video released by the Italian police.
“Today, Africa is confirmed as a strategic area for the search for fugitives and the fight against organised crime. Developing African countries also represent elective places for the laundering of the illicit capital of organised crime and Italy is committed at an international level to facilitate, through penal and administrative instruments, the tracing of the illicit assets of the mafias for their seizure and confiscation,” Italian news media, agenzianova, quoted the European country’s Deputy Director General of the Department of Public Security and Central Director of Criminal Police, Vittorio Rizzi, as saying.
Although, in Italy, street prostitution is lawful, the law frowns upon organised prostitution in the manner Joy had perpetrated it in the country.
