Dilaver took the women back to Velesta, the village where he was born, but Natalia soon realized she was pregnant � the result of hundreds of sexual encounters without condoms, which clients refused to wear. Leku was furious. �He took me to have an abortion,� Natalia said. �He paid the doctor 50 euros.� Then Dilaver sent her back to her former �owner.� �He got a refund,� Natalia said. �3,000 euros.�
Stories like Natalia�s are repeated by dozens of women who say they hope their testimony will one day put Dilaver behind bars. Sixteen-year-old Loredana left her native Bucharest in January, chasing a dream of working in Western Europe. But like thousands of naive Romanian girls, she ended up locked in a brothel in Macedonia. In Dilaver�s Expresso bar, �there was one client every hour, unless someone took me for the whole night,� Loredana said.
�I AM A WONDERFUL BOSS�
Dilaver denies the claims. He offers phone numbers of Russian women who have worked in his club. �They will tell you I am a wonderful boss,� he said. Reached by phone in Russia, they spoke in glowing terms of Dilaver, though they admitted he had phoned them first.
Apparently preparing for his day in court, and irked by a reporter�s questions, Dilaver produced a dozen notarized statements from women � former �dancers� at his clubs � who blame their ill treatment on corrupt local police. In the documents, they say Dilaver rescued them. If there was prostitution, Dilaver says, it wasn�t his fault.
�These girls run away from their fathers and mothers. Then they run away from me. I offer for them to work as waitresses. But they want more money. And they want to sleep with men. It�s in their nature to prostitute themselves.� Dilaver says his dancers gave their statements willingly. However, one of the signatures is that of a 33-year-old Moldovan who told MSNBC.com in September 2001 that Dilaver held her as a sex slave and paid off police to issue false Macedonian work documents. �He told me to forget any thought I had of making money or returning home,� Luisa said. Dilaver now says he has quit the business of employing foreign women altogether, though he admits that �Moldovan and Ukrainian women bring in more clients.�
�I rented out my clubs for the last two years,� he said. �I�m not in the business anymore.�Loredana and Natalia say they were working for Dilaver in Velesta as recently as January and October, respectively. Loredana was wounded in a firefight that broke out during a police raid on Velesta. �I would love to seem him dead, but not because somebody shoots him,� she said by phone from a Bucharest shelter, where she is recovering from her wounds and resuming her studies. �I want personally to be the one who shoots him.�
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