Soho's Russian vice lords

The girl was wearing a scant leopard-skin-print bikini, and the young detective stared self-consciously ahead as he questioned her. How old was she? Where was she from? Had she been subjected to duress? The girl folded her arms across her chest and said she was Russian. The detective repeated, more firmly: "How old are you?"

She shot a glance across the room at a middle-aged woman who had been watching intently, then said she was 17. The woman nodded approvingly. Where is your passport, the detective asked. I've lost it, the girl replied.

This scene was being played out in a shabby flat above an amusement arcade in Soho. According to criminal intelligence, this long-established brothel had acquired at least one girl who was believed to be 15, or possibly 14, years old. The detective conferred with two colleagues and they concluded the Russian girl was probably over 16, the legal age for sex. They bade her and the madam goodnight, then walked down the stairs.

It might be thought they had taken a generous view. Surely, a teenage Russian girl without a passport and working in a notorious sex establishment was worth further investigation? The detective would probably agree, but to imagine that the police accomplish everything they feel is necessary would be to ignore the reality.

The sex trade in London, and especially its epicentre in the West End, has become an untameable beast - while the police cling valiantly to its tail, the possibility of bringing it under control appears remote.

Witness the encounter with the young Russian prostitute. It took place in Charing Cross Road at an address made famous by Maltese Charlie, a pimp who specialised in controlling girls who charged premium rates because they were under-age.

His sordid business was estimated to earn him more than £500,000 a year. When police officers finally arrested him, he had £3,200 in cash in his pockets, £58,000 in cash at his house - and, in the refrigerator, tubs of margarine in which £20,000 worth of gold jewellery was concealed.

Charlie, celebrated for his reputation for having a pair of eyes tattooed on his buttocks, was sentenced to nine months' jail. That was four years ago. Today his old haunt in Charing Cross Road is still in business.

A reasonable person might wonder why, after a nine-week trial that cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds, it was still not possible to wind up a business that exploits young women. One of Maltese Charlie's girls was proved to have been 14 when she was working as a prostitute.

It might also be asked why police visit such establishments and - this time, although satisfied no children are involved - leave them to conduct their trade.

The answer to these questions lies in the success of the sex industry itself. Its runaway growth has vastly outstripped the law's ability to deal with it effectively.

On Thursday night last week, when police called at Maltese Charlie's old place, another entirely separate operation was unfolding on the other side of Soho. In a well-publicised and orchestrated series of raids, police officers hit three so-called sex clubs and a shop trading as Mona Lisa Lingerie. The shop was an unlicensed centre for retailing pornographic videos.

The police took away plastic sacks filled with video cassettes in cases decorated with barely believable explicit images.

Workmen from Westminster Council removed the Mona Lisa Lingerie sign and the place was closed up. Today the shelves are again full. Customers browse freely and, despite the fact the neon sign has not been replaced, it appears to be a case of business as usual. A leather-jacketed salesman smirked when I asked him about the raid. "I don't know why they bother," he said.

Why indeed? It's something the police might be forgiven for asking themselves. Last week's raids made headlines and created an impression that Soho was being "cleaned up". But, in the continuing battle against the proliferation of the illegal sex industry, this was a mere skirmish.

The last major offensive against "the vice", as locals call it, was in the Eighties. Scores of peep shows and pornography shops were driven out as Westminster council introduced a strict licensing system to limit the number of sex establishments.

Backed by determined police action, the moves worked and Soho's seedy character began to change. New residents moved in, many of the fine old houses were refurbished for families and Soho became a smart address. It is still home to more than 5,000 people, and residential property is highly desirable. But Soho has begun to slip back into its bad old ways.

"We don't have a problem with licensed sex establishments," said Bryan Burrough of the Soho Society. "But there has been an increase in the number of unlicensed places and that is worrying."

According to Mr Burrough - a lifelong Soho resident who has an impressive knowledge of the area and its history - there are around 20 illegal sex operations currently working in Soho. Of these, a number are clip joints.

The clip joint is an anachronism, a crime dinosaur that flourished in the Fifties. It had all but died out but a new criminal class has revived it. The new clip joint operators are Eastern European gangsters, gathered together in a loose grouping that senior police officers believe may be controlled by one individual.

Ethnic Albanians have been blamed for vice expansionism in Soho but new evidence suggests a Russian connection.

One wealthy and influential Russian businessman controls a number of licensed establishments in Soho - strip bars and peep shows - with the help of British front men.

Other Russians are involved in running the illegal operations. A "doorgirl" - one of the young women who entice punters into the clip joints - told me: "The Albanians have lots of girls but most of them don't even speak English. They can't run a business. The work we do is not illegal and nobody gets hurt."

Not everyone would agree with that. The clip joints lure punters by promising a strip show for a mere £5 entrance fee. In a pattern that operates across Soho, the client is introduced to a hostess who chats to him for a few minutes. He is then presented with a bill - it is invariably £295 - to which a 25 per cent "service charge" is added. If the customer protests - which most do - the woman slips away and she is replaced by a thug who warns the punter that he will be beaten up if he doesn't pay.

If he doesn't have enough money he is marched to a nearby cash machine. The route between the clip joints and local banks is well-travelled. One of the first tasks of the morning at Soho Parish School in Great Windmill Street is the collection of emptied wallets that have been thrown over the playground wall.

In last week's police raids three suspected clip joints were closed down. Far more than this are still operating. They can make vast profits from extortion - the charge is demanding money with menaces - and it seems the police are able only to take out a token number. There is a reason for this. The police cannot act without gathering evidence that will stand up in court. And it is usually impossible to get to the person who is actually controlling an illegal operation.

One of the clip joints raided last week is owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. Numerous sub-leases have been taken out on parts of the property, all in the name of investment companies. Westminster council needs an enforcement order to close the premises down but, often, it proves impossible to find the person on whom such an order can be served.

"The council, like the police, has limited resources and it is a discouraging business," Bryan Burrough said.

"In similar circumstances elsewhere - in Italy, for example - they would simply weld the door up. But that's not possible here."

The National Criminal Intelligence Service has estimated that Soho generates £12 million a year in profits from vice. This sort of money is irresistible for the new godfathers of London crime, and the traditional working girls of Soho have found themselves becoming increasingly crowded by young women operated by Eastern European pimps. In a Home Office report circulated last year it was estimated that Albanians and Albanian Kosovars control 70 per cent of Soho's vice trade.

The Albanians have been implicated in kidnappings and cases where women have been forced into prostitution against their will. Such cases have been documented and exposed by the Evening Standard. But a former brothel maid, who has worked with Albanian pimps in Euston, claimed there was no shortage of women who are only too willing to be trafficked across Europe to work in London.

This woman, who is British, said: "You hear a lot about sex slavery but many of the girls who are working in London have paid for the privilege.

"Often they go into debt to raise the 2,000 euros [£1,200] it might cost them to get smuggled into Britain. The clever ones pay this back and stay off drugs. In a couple of years they go home with enough money to give them a decent start. For a lot of them, it's the only way they are ever going to get anything."

A young Romanian prostitute, who said she had graduated from university in Bucharest, told me she and her boyfriend had just bought a large property in Croydon, which they intended to let out as a rooming house. They raised a mortgage when her pimp arranged for a restaurant owner of his acquaintance to tell the building society they were salaried employees.

This woman is in her early twenties and says she plans to buy more properties before she abandons, as it were, her day job. The reality is that she will probably never be troubled by the police.

Her pimp, whose nationality she refuses to divulge, is also likely to continue to operate unmolested.

The police are doubtless planning new operations and more raids can be expected. But, as the tills ring out again at the Mona Lisa video shop and the bikini-clad Russian girl plies her trade in Charing Cross Road, one things is clear: the war against Soho vice is far from being won.