HANOI - Police in Vietnam said today they had broken up a trafficking ring and arrested six people, including a Malaysian man, who smuggled Vietnamese women to Malaysia to work as prostitutes.

A police official in the southern commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City said the gang began operations last year following the implementation of a visa-exemption agreement between Vietnam and Malaysia.

The bust was made after police arrested two women at the city's Tan Son Nhat international airport on Saturday en route to Malaysia. A further four people were detained later that day.

Ten Vietnamese women, who were paid 500 dollars (RM1,900) each, had been trafficked to Malaysia before the arrests were made, he said.

The women had to give the first 3,200 dollars (RM12,160) of their earnings to the traffickers to cover costs but afterwards were allowed to keep 70 percent of what they earned.

Regional middle-man

Police have yet to arrest the gang's female ringleader, Ly To My, whose husband, Ah Chu, lives in Malaysia.

The official said Chu, a Malaysian national, was in charge of finding clients for the women.

His Malaysian accomplice Tee Poh Eng, who acted as the gang's regional middle-man, was among those arrested in Ho Chi Minh City.

Non-governmental organizations are increasingly concerned over the rise in the number of Vietnamese women being sent overseas to work as prostitutes.

In April, state media said that over the past five years 30,000 women had been sold into prostitution in China or married off to men they had never met.

Thousands more from the southern Mekong Delta region, many of them minors, have been sold into prostitution in neighbouring Cambodia, according to the Vietnamese authorities.

In July, Ho Chi Minh City police busted a crime ring supplying women to Taiwanese men and rescued 59 women lured by the prospects of a brighter, more financially secure future overseas. — AFP