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Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has declared about the arrest of 13 members of an organized criminal group which in 2007-2009 had taken out hundreds of workers to Azerbaijan, where in the future they have been exploited as slaves, reports the Azerbaijani news portal "Haqqin.az."

As noted in the article, the group members had sent for a total of more than 600 workers from Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia to Azerbaijan.

"Once these people found themselves in Azerbaijan, they were kept in inhumane conditions. They were not receiving wages and were forced to work in intolerable conditions," the prosecutor's office statement reads.

The gang members earned more than four million dollars by selling the slaves in Azerbaijan, the article reads.

Portal reminds that it was the radio "Liberty” who reported for the first time about the exploitation of the Bosnian workers in Azerbaijan. In the result of the journalists’ investigation it was discovered that these workers were used in constructions being erected for the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Azerbaijan. The construction was carried out by the contractor LLC “SerbAz.”

Slaves from the Balkan countries worked on such constructions as Mingachevir Olympic Complex, Buta Palace and the Mall "28 May". It is noteworthy that the office of the “SerbAz” company was located at the training base of national Olympic teams.

According to a report of the U.S. State Department “Trafficking in Persons Report 2014”, Azerbaijan is considered a country where men, women and children are trafficked to other countries for forced labor and sexual exploitation. In addition, in Azerbaijan cases of exploitation of foreign nationals are recorded. In the report Armenia is attributed to the first group of countries, and Azerbaijan - to the second, which means that the Armenian government is making significant efforts to combat trafficking and fulfills all the minimum standards in this area.