A man who ran a prostitution ring more akin to modern-day sex slavery was jailed for 11 years yesterday after being found guilty of locking up Eastern European women in his farmhouse and forcing them to go to bed with men.

The international ring was smashed after one of the girls managed to make a desperate call to her mother back in Russia in 2004.

The mother then contacted the police, effectively breaking the ring which included the complicity of a policeman, Magistrate Giovanni Grixti said in his judgement.

The pimp, Raymond Mifsud, 37, from Luqa, would lure girls to Malta by offering them work in a restaurant. Instead, he would lock them inside his farmhouse and force them to have sex with men for €35.

When girls refused to work as prostitutes, Mr Mifsud would offer them a job working in a strip bar and, if they refused that, he “sold” them off to someone else for about €1,200 to settle the debt they incurred in travelling to Malta.

Mr Mifsud was aided by his Russian partner Tatiana Alkina, who testified that she had previously been convicted of running a

brothel but, although in a relationship with Mr Mifsud, was treated the same as the other girls.

She said Mr Mifsud forced her to get girls from Russia and the Ukraine and she would make the arrangements through her mother who lived in Moscow.

Mr Mifsud told her he also wanted the girls to work at the Steam Bar in Paceville.

Ms Alkina said she brought nine women over to Malta in all but the accused also obtained other women from somebody else.

He eventually “sold” her to an immigration policeman, Kevin Amato, who would help in the provision of visas, she testified.

Mr Amato admitted in court that he was an intermediary for the sale of a woman from Mr Mifsud but the buyer did not produce the full amount of €600 and there was an argument.

Magistrate Grixti said the evidence against the accused was corroborated by a number of witnesses.

He described the way the girls were sold as “inhuman” and mentioned how they were taken straight to the farmhouse as soon as they landed and made to sleep with men against their will.

Mr Mifsud lied to the girls about where they were meant to live and, when faced with this situation, they had no other option but to live at the farmhouse, the magistrate said.

The owners of Steam Club in Paceville, in a statement through their lawyer, George Cutajar, said they did not know Mr Mifsud and had never had any contact with him. They added that they were never called to testify in the case and knew nothing of the proceedings.

This is not the first case of sex slavery to reach the courts. In 2008 two men were charged after a 21-year-old Swedish woman alleged that she had escaped from a brothel under their control.

That same year a former pimp had told The Sunday Times that the ring of sex slavery had grown exponentially in 2004, thanks to the complicity of officials and police officers.

“There was a lot going on with visa permits back then... (in 2004). You’d have a guy in immigration or high up the ladder, you give him a little somethin’ and a girl to spend the night with and then it (the visa for the prostitute) gets sorted... Money talks, my friend... Even Judas had a price, and he sold God,” the retired pimp had said.

In 2004, in fact, two immigration police constables were arraigned and charged with trafficking in human beings for the purpose of prostitution.