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

Warning: Contains disturbing content material and graphic descriptions of sexual acts

A person operating a intercourse ring working out of Dubai’s most glamorous neighbourhoods, and exploiting weak ladies, has been recognized by a BBC investigation.

Charles Mwesigwa, who says he’s a former London bus driver, advised our undercover reporter he may present ladies for a intercourse get together at a beginning worth of $1,000 (£740), including that many can do “pretty much everything” purchasers need them to.

Rumours of untamed intercourse events within the UAE emirate have circulated for years. The hashtag #Dubaiportapotty, which has been seen greater than 450 million occasions on TikTookay, hyperlinks to parodies and speculative exposés of girls accused of being money-hungry influencers secretly funding their life by fulfilling essentially the most extreme of sexual requests.

Our BBC World Service investigation was advised the truth is even darker.

Young Ugandan ladies advised us they’d not anticipated to need to undertake intercourse work for Mr Mwesigwa. In some instances, they believed they have been travelling to the UAE to work in locations like supermarkets or motels.

At least one in all Mr Mwesigwa’s purchasers recurrently asks to defecate on the ladies, in line with “Mia”, whose title 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 ladies discover lodging by means of landlords, and that ladies comply with him to events due to his rich Dubai contacts.

We have additionally found that two ladies linked to Mr Mwesigwa have died, having fallen from high-rise flats. Although their deaths have been dominated as suicides, their family and friends really feel the police ought to have investigated additional.

Mr Mwesigwa stated the incidents have been investigated by the Dubai police and requested us to contact them for data. They didn’t reply to our request.

One of the ladies who misplaced her life, Monic Karungi, arrived in Dubai from western Uganda.

She discovered herself sharing a flat with dozens of different ladies working for Mr Mwesigwa, in line with one of many ladies, who we’re calling Keira, who says she lived with Monic there in 2022.

“[His] place was like a market… There were like 50 girls. She was not happy because what she expected is not what she got,” Keira advised us.

Monic thought the job in Dubai was going to be in a grocery store, in line with her sister Rita.

“He [Mr Mwesigwa] was violent when I told him I wanted to go back home,” says Mia, who additionally knew Monic in Dubai. She says that, when she first arrived, he advised her she already owed him £2,000 ($2,711) and that inside two weeks that debt had doubled.

“Money for air tickets, for your visa, for where you’re sleeping, food,” says Mia.

“That means you have to work hard, hard, hard, pleading for men to come and sleep [with] you.”

Monic owed Mr Mwesigwa greater than $27,000 (£19,918) after a number of weeks, in line with what a relative of hers we’re calling Michael says she advised him. He provides that he acquired tearful voice notes from her.

Mia advised us that purchasers have been largely white Europeans, and included males with excessive fetishes.

“There’s this one client, he poops on girls. He poops and he tells them to eat the shit,” she defined quietly.

Another lady we’re calling Lexi, who says she was tricked by a distinct community, echoed Mia’s story, saying “porta potty” requests have been frequent.

“There was a client who said: ‘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 imagine there’s a racial factor to this excessive fetish.

“Every time I said that I wouldn’t want to do that, it seemed to get them more interested. They want somebody who is going to cry and scream and run. And that somebody [in their eyes] should be a black person.”

Lexi says she tried to get assist from the one folks she thought may intervene – the police. But she says they advised her: “You Africans cause problems for each other. We don’t want to get involved. And they would hang up.”

We put this allegation to the Dubai police and they didn’t reply.

Lexi finally escaped again to Uganda and now helps to rescue and help ladies in related conditions.

Finding 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.

But by means of a mix of open-source intelligence, undercover analysis, and data 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 advised us about his enterprise – supplying ladies for degrading intercourse acts – we despatched in an undercover reporter posing as an occasion organiser sourcing ladies for high-end events.

Mr Mwesigwa appeared calm and assured when talking about his enterprise.

“We’ve got like 25 girls,” he stated. “Many are open-minded… they can do pretty much everything.”

He defined the fee – from $1,000 (£738) per lady per evening, however extra for “crazy stuff”. He invited our reporter for a “sample night”.

When requested about “Dubai porta potty” he replied: “I’ve told you, they are open-minded. When I say open-minded… I will send you the craziest I have.”

In the course of the dialog, Mr Mwesigwa stated he was a London bus driver. 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 cherished this enterprise.

“I could win the lottery, a million pounds, but I would still do it… it’s become 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.

He says Mr Mwesigwa pays off safety at varied nightclubs so they may let his ladies in to seek out purchasers.

“I’ve heard about types of sex that I’ve never seen in my life. It doesn’t matter what you go through as long as his rich men are happy… [the women] have no 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 will not be simply used as drivers. He says their names are additionally utilized by Mr Mwesigwa to rent vehicles and flats, in order that his personal title 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. Four days later, she was useless. She had been within the emirate for simply 4 months.

According to Mia, Monic and Mr Mwesigwa had been recurrently 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 got some kind of job. She was very excited. She thought she was gonna get free, she was going to get her life back because now that was a real job, no sleeping with men,” Mia says.

Monic moved out to a distinct house about 10 minutes’ stroll away. It was from this house’s balcony that she fell on 1 May 2022.

Monic’s relative Michael, who was within the UAE on the time she died, says he tried to get solutions.

Police advised him they stopped their investigation, having discovered medicine and alcohol within the house Monic had fallen from, and solely her fingerprints on the balcony, he says.

He obtained a demise certificates for Monic from a hospital, nevertheless it didn’t say how she had died. And her household have been unable to acquire a toxicology report for her.

But a Ghanaian man dwelling within the house 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 bought there and noticed the place the ladies have been housed.

He says by means of the cloud of shisha smoke in the lounge, he made out what appeared like cocaine on the desk and ladies having intercourse on chairs with purchasers.

He claims he discovered the person we had beforehand recognized as Charles Mwesigwa in mattress with two ladies, and that when he tried to pull him to the police Mr Mwesigwa replied: “I have spent 25 years in Dubai. Dubai is mine… There is no way you are going to report me… Embassy is me, I’m the embassy.

“[Monic’s] not the primary to die. And she will not be the final,” he added, according to Michael.

Mia and Keira both independently say they witnessed this conversation and both confirm its wording. When we asked Mr Mwesigwa what he meant by this, he denied having said it.

Monic’s death shares haunting similarities with that of Kayla Birungi, another Ugandan woman who lived in the same neighbourhood as her, and died in 2021 after falling from a Dubai high-rise apartment which we have evidence to suggest was managed by Charles Mwesigwa.

The phone number for her landlord, shared with us by Kayla’s family, turned out to be one of Mr Mwesigwa’s numbers. Troy also confirms that Mr Mwesigwa managed the apartment, as do four other women we spoke to for this investigation.

Kayla’s relatives say that they – like Monic’s family – heard Kayla’s death had been linked to alcohol and drugs. But a toxicology report seen by the BBC shows none were present in her system at the time of her death.

While Kayla’s family was able to repatriate her body and hold a burial, Monic’s remains were never returned.

Our investigation found she was likely buried in a section of Dubai’s Al Qusais Cemetery known as “The Unknown”. It features rows and rows of unmarked graves, typically thought to belong to migrants whose family couldn’t repatriate their bodies.

Monic and Kayla were part of a wider, unofficial pipeline connecting Uganda to the Gulf.

As Uganda wrestles with rising youth unemployment, moving to work abroad – mainly in the Gulf states – has become a huge industry that contributes $1.2bn (£885m) of tax revenue to the country each year.

But these opportunities can carry a risk.

Mariam Mwiza, a Ugandan activist against exploitation, says she has helped rescue more than 700 people from around the Gulf.

“We get instances of people that have been promised to work, for example, in a grocery store. Then [that person] finally ends up bought as a prostitute,” she advised us.

For Monic’s family, grief is now tangled with fear. Fear for other families who could suffer the same loss they have, if nothing is done.

“We are all taking a look at Monica’s demise,” her relative Michael told us. “But who’s there for the women nonetheless alive? They’re nonetheless there. Still struggling.”

The BBC requested Charles “Abbey” Mwesigwa to respond to all the allegations made in our investigation. He denied running an illegal prostitution ring.

He said: “These are all false allegations.

“I told you I am just a party person who invites big spenders on my tables, hence making many girls flock [to] my table. That makes me know many girls and that’s it.”

He additionally stated: “[Monic] died with her passport meaning no-one was demanding her money for taking her. Prior to her death, I hadn’t seen her for over four to five weeks.

“I knew [Monic and Kayla] and [they] have been renting with completely different landlords. If no-one in each flats was arrested or any of the landlords, then there was a motive. Both incidents have been investigated by the Dubai police and possibly they might help you.”

The BBC contacted Al Barsha Police Station to request to see the case files for Monic Karungi and Kayla Birungi. It did not respond to that request or to allegations Monica and Kayla’s deaths had not been properly investigated.

The BBC was unable to see any toxicology reports in relation to Monic Karungi, or speak to the landlord of the apartment in which she was living when she died.

• If you have any information to add to this investigation please contact [email protected]

• Details of organisations offering information about or support after sexual abuse or with feelings of despair are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.