Ex-London bus driver runs degrading sex-trade ring in Dubai’s glamorous neighbourhoods

Runako CelinaBBC Eye InvestigationsWatch: Charles Mwesigwa – identified domestically as Abbey – says his girls are “open-minded”Warning: Accommodates disturbing content material and graphic descriptions of sexual actsA man operating a intercourse ring working out of Dubai’s most glamorous neighbourhoods, and exploiting susceptible girls, has been recognized by a BBC investigation.Charles Mwesigwa, who says he’s a former London bus driver, instructed our undercover reporter he may present girls for a intercourse celebration at a beginning worth of $1,000 (£740), including that many can do “just about every thing” purchasers need them to.Rumours of untamed intercourse events within the UAE emirate have circulated for years. The hashtag #Dubaiportapotty, which has been considered greater than 450 million occasions on TikTok, hyperlinks to parodies and speculative exposés of ladies accused of being money-hungry influencers secretly funding their existence by fulfilling essentially the most extreme of sexual requests.Our BBC World Service investigation was instructed the fact is even darker.Younger Ugandan girls instructed us they’d not anticipated to should undertake intercourse work for Mr Mwesigwa. In some instances, they believed they had been travelling to the UAE to work in locations like supermarkets or accommodations.At the least one among Mr Mwesigwa’s purchasers often asks to defecate on the ladies, based on “Mia”, whose identify we now have modified to guard her id, and who says she was trapped by Mr Mwesigwa’s community.Mr Mwesigwa denies the allegations. He says he helps girls discover lodging by means of landlords, and that ladies observe him to events due to his rich Dubai contacts.Now we have additionally found that two girls linked to Mr Mwesigwa have died, having fallen from high-rise residences. Though their deaths had been dominated as suicides, their family and friends really feel the police ought to have investigated additional.Mr Mwesigwa stated the incidents had been investigated by the Dubai police and requested us to contact them for data. They didn’t reply to our request.One of many girls who misplaced her life, Monic Karungi, arrived in Dubai from western Uganda. She discovered herself sharing a flat with dozens of different girls working for Mr Mwesigwa, based on one of many girls, who we’re calling Keira, who says she lived with Monic there in 2022.”[His] place was like a market… There have been like 50 ladies. She was not glad as a result of what she anticipated shouldn’t be what she acquired,” Keira instructed us.Monic thought the job in Dubai was going to be in a grocery store, based on her sister Rita.”He [Mr Mwesigwa] was violent once I instructed him I needed to return house,” says Mia, who additionally knew Monic in Dubai. She says that, when she first arrived, he instructed her she already owed him £2,000 ($2,711) and that inside two weeks that debt had doubled.”Cash for air tickets, to your visa, for the place you are sleeping, meals,” says Mia.”Which means it’s important to work onerous, onerous, onerous, pleading for males to come back and sleep [with] you.”Monic owed Mr Mwesigwa greater than $27,000 (£19,918) after a number of weeks, based on what a relative of hers we’re calling Michael says she instructed him. He provides that he obtained tearful voice notes from her.Household handoutMonic grew up with 10 siblings in rural UgandaMia instructed us that purchasers had been largely white Europeans, and included males with excessive fetishes.”There’s this one consumer, he poops on ladies. He poops and he tells them to eat the shit,” she defined quietly.One other girl we’re calling Lexi, who says she was tricked by a distinct community, echoed Mia’s story, saying “porta potty” requests had been frequent.”There was a consumer who stated: ‘We pay you 15,000 Arab Emirates Dirham ($4,084, £3,013) to gang-rape you, pee in your face, beat you, and add in 5,000 ($1,361, £1,004)'” for being recorded consuming faeces.Her experiences have led her to consider there’s a racial ingredient to this excessive fetish.”Each time I stated that I would not wish to try this, it appeared to get them extra . They need someone who’s going to cry and scream and run. And that someone [in their eyes] ought to be a black individual.”Lexi says she tried to get assist from the one folks she thought may intervene – the police. However she says they instructed her: “You Africans trigger issues for one another. We do not wish to get entangled. And they’d cling up.”We put this allegation to the Dubai police and they didn’t reply.Lexi ultimately escaped again to Uganda and now helps to rescue and assist girls in related conditions.Warsan Tower in Dubai, from which Monic Karungi fell in Might 2022Finding Charles Mwesigwa wasn’t straightforward. We may solely discover one image of him on-line – and it was taken from behind. He additionally makes use of a number of names throughout social media.However by means of a mix of open-source intelligence, undercover analysis, and knowledge from a former member of his community, we traced him to a center class neighbourhood in Dubai – Jumeirah Village Circle.To corroborate what sources had instructed us about his enterprise – supplying girls for degrading intercourse acts – we despatched in an undercover reporter posing as an occasion organiser sourcing girls for high-end events.Mr Mwesigwa appeared calm and assured when talking about his enterprise.Mr Mwesigwa confirmed us his UK driving licence and stated he was a former London bus driver”We have got like 25 ladies,” he stated. “Many are open-minded… they will do just about every thing.”He defined the price – from $1,000 (£738) per lady per night time, however extra for “loopy stuff”. He invited our reporter for a “pattern night time”.When requested about “Dubai porta potty” he replied: “I’ve instructed you, they’re open-minded. Once I say open-minded… I’ll ship you the craziest I’ve.”In the midst of the dialog, Mr Mwesigwa stated he was once a London bus driver. Now we have seen proof he put that occupation down on an official doc in east London in 2006.He went on to inform our reporter that he liked this enterprise.”I may win the lottery, 1,000,000 kilos, however I might nonetheless do it… it is turn into a part of me.”Troy, a person who says he used to behave as operations supervisor for Mr Mwesigwa’s community, gave us extra details about how he says it’s run.Troy says he used to work as a driver after which an operations supervisor for Charles MwesigwaHe says Mr Mwesigwa pays off safety at numerous nightclubs so they may let his girls in to seek out purchasers.”I’ve heard about kinds of intercourse that I’ve by no means seen in my life. It does not matter what you undergo so long as his wealthy males are glad… [the women] haven’t any escape route…They see musicians, they see footballers, they see presidents.”Mr Mwesigwa has been capable of get away with operating this operation, Troy claims, as a result of Troy and others should not simply used as drivers. He says their names are additionally utilized by Mr Mwesigwa to rent vehicles and residences, in order that his personal identify by no means seems on the paperwork.On 27 April 2022, Monic posted a selfie from Al Barsha – a residential neighbourhood widespread with expats in Dubai. 4 days later, she was lifeless. She had been within the emirate for simply 4 months.In line with Mia, Monic and Mr Mwesigwa had been often arguing within the interval earlier than she left. Mia says Monic had been refusing to adjust to Mr Mwesigwa’s calls for and had discovered a method out of his community.”She had acquired some type of job. She was very excited. She thought she was gonna get free, she was going to get her life again as a result of now that was an actual job, no sleeping with males,” Mia says.Monic moved out to a distinct residence about 10 minutes’ stroll away. It was from this residence’s balcony that she fell on 1 Might 2022.InstagramThe last selfie Monic posted earlier than she died Monic’s relative Michael, who was within the UAE on the time she died, says he tried to get solutions.Police instructed him they stopped their investigation, having discovered medicine and alcohol within the residence Monic had fallen from, and solely her fingerprints on the balcony, he says.He obtained a dying certificates for Monic from a hospital, however it didn’t say how she had died. And her household had been unable to acquire a toxicology report for her.However a Ghanaian man residing within the residence constructing was extra useful, he says, taking him to a different block to fulfill the person he stated was Monic’s boss.Michael describes the scene when he acquired there and noticed the place the ladies had been housed.He says by means of the cloud of shisha smoke in the lounge, he made out what regarded like cocaine on the desk and girls having intercourse on chairs with purchasers.He claims he discovered the person we had beforehand recognized as Charles Mwesigwa in mattress with two girls, and that when he tried to tug him to the police Mr Mwesigwa replied: “I’ve spent 25 years in Dubai. Dubai is mine… There is no such thing as a method you’re going to report me… Embassy is me, I am the embassy.”[Monic’s] not the primary to die. And he or she will not be the final,” he added, based on Michael.Mia and Keira each independently say they witnessed this dialog and each affirm its wording. Once we requested Mr Mwesigwa what he meant by this, he denied having stated it.Monic’s dying shares haunting similarities with that of Kayla Birungi, one other Ugandan girl who lived in the identical neighbourhood as her, and died in 2021 after falling from a Dubai high-rise residence which we now have proof to counsel was managed by Charles Mwesigwa. The telephone quantity for her landlord, shared with us by Kayla’s household, turned out to be one among Mr Mwesigwa’s numbers. Troy additionally confirms that Mr Mwesigwa managed the residence, as do 4 different girls we spoke to for this investigation.InstagramKayla Birungi, one other Ugandan, additionally died after falling from a Dubai high-rise constructing Kayla’s kinfolk say that they – like Monic’s household – heard Kayla’s dying had been linked to alcohol and medicines. However a toxicology report seen by the BBC reveals none had been current in her system on the time of her dying.Whereas Kayla’s household was capable of repatriate her physique and maintain a burial, Monic’s stays had been by no means returned.Our investigation discovered she was probably buried in a bit of Dubai’s Al Qusais Cemetery generally known as “The Unknown”. It options rows and rows of unmarked graves, sometimes thought to belong to migrants whose household could not repatriate their our bodies.Monic and Kayla had been a part of a wider, unofficial pipeline connecting Uganda to the Gulf.As Uganda wrestles with rising youth unemployment, shifting to work overseas – primarily within the Gulf states – has turn into an enormous trade that contributes $1.2bn (£885m) of tax income to the nation annually.However these alternatives can carry a danger.Mariam Mwiza, a Ugandan activist in opposition to exploitation, says she has helped rescue greater than 700 folks from across the Gulf.”We get instances of people that have been promised to work, as an example, in a grocery store. Then [that person] finally ends up offered as a prostitute,” she instructed us.Monic’s household in rural Uganda say Monic at all times had the ambition to hunt a greater lifeFor Monic’s household, grief is now tangled with worry. Worry for different households who may endure the identical loss they’ve, if nothing is finished.”We’re all taking a look at Monica’s dying,” her relative Michael instructed us. “However who’s there for the ladies nonetheless alive? They’re nonetheless there. Nonetheless struggling.”The BBC requested Charles “Abbey” Mwesigwa to reply to all of the allegations made in our investigation. He denied operating an unlawful prostitution ring.He stated: “These are all false allegations.”I instructed you I’m only a celebration one who invitations massive spenders on my tables, therefore making many ladies flock [to] my desk. That makes me know many ladies and that is it.”He additionally stated: “[Monic] died together with her passport that means no-one was demanding her cash for taking her. Previous to her dying, I hadn’t seen her for over 4 to 5 weeks.”I knew [Monic and Kayla] and [they] had been renting with completely different landlords. If no-one in each flats was arrested or any of the landlords, then there was a motive. Each incidents had been investigated by the Dubai police and perhaps they may also help you.”The BBC contacted Al Barsha Police Station to request to see the case recordsdata for Monic Karungi and Kayla Birungi. It didn’t reply to that request or to allegations Monica and Kayla’s deaths had not been correctly investigated.The BBC was unable to see any toxicology experiences in relation to Monic Karungi, or communicate to the owner of the residence through which she was residing when she died.If in case you have any data so as to add to this investigation please contact runako@bbc.co.ukDetails of organisations providing details about or assist after sexual abuse or with emotions of despair can be found at bbc.co.uk/actionline.