A global human trafficking syndicate has exploited flaws in Australian border security and the immigration system that allowed it to run a national illegal sex racket moving exploited foreign women around the country like “cattle”.
The crime boss at the operation’s centre set up his Australian operation immediately after his release from jail in Britain, where he was implicated in a similar illegal sex ring.
Binjun Xie, now a wealthy Sydney resident but previously identified by UK police as a Chinese triad boss nicknamed “The Hammer”, is one of several crime syndicate figures using migration system gaps.
British investigator Kevin Forrest, who helped jail Xie in England a decade ago, said Asian women at his brothels had their passports removed and were directed to perform extreme and degrading services, including rape fantasies.
He said the women were subjected to modern slavery-like conditions: “You never come out. You never go into town. You never socialise. You’re never allowed to do anything else. You are there to perform the sex.”
“Absolutely flabbergasted. I’m flabbergasted that he’s able to get into Australia, bearing in mind that he was jailed here for five years with a condition that he was deported back to China upon his release,” Forrest said.
Law enforcement sources not authorised to talk publicly said investigators warned Commonwealth agencies that federal government-licensed migration agents – including one who has submitted visa applications linked to Xie’s network, Sydney migration agent Songtao Lu – were enabling visa farms.
Senior Queensland Police organised crime investigator Detective Inspector Brad Phelps said vulnerable Asian women were being moved like “cattle” across Australia and being paid abysmally, if at all, by crime syndicates earning “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
Investigators also documented “links to Asian organised crime, child pornography and potential exploitation of young female Chinese students, human trafficking and money laundering across borders”.
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