A 35-year-old woman from Ialoveni was sentenced to seven years in jail for exploiting a couple from Moldova by forcing them to beg in Moscow in 2013. The authorities were notified of this case in four years, IPN reports, quoting the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases.

The culprit promised the woman work with US$300 remuneration a month. The victim’s husband decided to join in. When they arrived in Moscow, they were stripped of passports and accommodated in an apartment where they slept on the floor. They went to work at 7am and finished at 7-8pm. When they were begging, the woman supervised them by staying close to them. According to the couple, the woman threatened them with the use of physical violence if they begged insufficiently.

The couple got their passports back only after they told the culprit that they would go to the police. To be able to return to Moldova, they left the apartment where they were lodged and begged money to buy a ticket to Moldova, sleeping in a basement meanwhile. After they returned to Moldova, their state of health worsened. The woman has a moderate disability degree, while the man died in 2020.

The prosecutors intend to challenge the Chisinau Court’s sentence by which the ex-husband of the convicted woman was acquitted so that this is also convicted as he was the one who prepared the couple’s departure to Russia and took them to the North Station from where they left for Moscow.