{"id":94209,"date":"2025-09-15T02:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=94209"},"modified":"2025-09-15T02:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T02:30:00","slug":"boss-of-degrading-sex-trade-ring-in-dubais-glamour-districts-unmasked-by-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=94209","title":{"rendered":"Boss of degrading sex-trade ring in Dubai\u2019s glamour districts unmasked by BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 59 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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A man running a sex ring operating out of Dubai\u2019s most glamorous neighbourhoods, and exploiting vulnerable women, has been identified by a BBC investigation.<\/p>\n

Charles Mwesigwa, who says he is a former London bus driver, told our undercover reporter he could provide women for a sex party at a starting price of $1,000 (\u00a3740), adding that many can do \u201cpretty much everything\u201d clients want them to.<\/p>\n

Rumours of wild sex parties in the UAE emirate have circulated for years. The hashtag #Dubaiportapotty, which has been viewed more than 450 million times on TikTok, links to parodies and speculative expos\u00e9s of women accused of being money-hungry influencers secretly funding their lifestyles by fulfilling the most excessive of sexual requests.<\/p>\n

Our BBC World Service investigation was told the reality is even darker.<\/p>\n

Young Ugandan women told us they had not expected to have to undertake sex work for Mr Mwesigwa. In some cases, they believed they were travelling to the UAE to work in places like supermarkets or hotels.<\/p>\n

At least one of Mr Mwesigwa\u2019s clients regularly asks to defecate on the women, according to \u201cMia\u201d, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, and who says she was trapped by Mr Mwesigwa\u2019s network.<\/p>\n

Mr Mwesigwa denies the allegations. He says he helps women find accommodation through landlords, and that women follow him to parties because of his wealthy Dubai contacts.<\/p>\n

We have also discovered that two women linked to Mr Mwesigwa have died, having fallen from high-rise apartments. Although their deaths were ruled as suicides, their friends and family feel the police should have investigated further.<\/p>\n

Mr Mwesigwa said the incidents were investigated by the Dubai police and asked us to contact them for information. They did not reply to our request.<\/p>\n

One of the women who lost her life, Monic Karungi, arrived in Dubai from western Uganda.<\/p>\n

She found herself sharing a flat with dozens of other women working for Mr Mwesigwa, according to one of the women, who we are calling Keira, who says she lived with Monic there in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201c[His] place was like a market\u2026 There were like 50 girls. She was not happy because what she expected is not what she got,\u201d Keira told us.<\/p>\n

Monic thought the job in Dubai was going to be in a supermarket, according to her sister Rita.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe [Mr Mwesigwa] was violent when I told him I wanted to go back home,\u201d says Mia, who also knew Monic in Dubai. She says that, when she first arrived, he told her she already owed him \u00a32,000 ($2,711) and that, within two weeks, that debt had doubled.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoney for air tickets, for your visa, for where you\u2019re sleeping, food,\u201d says Mia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means you have to work hard, hard, hard, pleading for men to come and sleep [with] you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monic owed Mr Mwesigwa more than $27,000 (\u00a319,918) after several weeks, according to what a relative of hers we are calling Michael, says she told him. He adds that he received tearful voice notes from her.<\/p>\n

Monic grew up with 10 siblings in rural Uganda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mia told us that clients were mostly white Europeans, and included men with extreme fetishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this one client, he poops on girls. He poops and he tells them to eat the shit,\u201d she explained quietly.<\/p>\n

Another woman we are calling Lexi, who says she was tricked by a different network, echoed Mia\u2019s story, saying \u201cporta potty\u201d requests were frequent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a client who said: \u2018We pay you 15,000 Arab Emirates Dirham ($4,084, \u00a33,013) to gang-rape you, pee in your face, beat you, and add in 5,000 ($1,361, \u00a31,004)’\u201d for being recorded eating faeces.<\/p>\n

Her experiences have led her to believe there is a racial element to this extreme fetish.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I said that I wouldn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lexi says she tried to get help from the only people she thought could intervene \u2013 the police. But she says they told her: \u201cYou Africans cause problems for each other. We don\u2019t want to get involved. And they would hang up.\u201d<\/p>\n

We put this allegation to the Dubai police, and they did not reply.<\/p>\n

Lexi eventually escaped back to Uganda and now helps to rescue and support women in similar situations.<\/p>\n

Warsan Tower in Dubai, from which Monic Karungi fell in May 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finding Charles Mwesigwa wasn\u2019t easy. We could only find one picture of him online \u2013 and it was taken from behind. He also uses multiple names across social media.<\/p>\n

But through a combination of open-source intelligence, undercover research, and information from a former member of his network, we traced him to a middle class neighbourhood in Dubai \u2013 Jumeirah Village Circle.<\/p>\n

To corroborate what sources had told us about his business \u2013 supplying women for degrading sex acts \u2013 we sent in an undercover reporter posing as an event organiser sourcing women for high-end parties.<\/p>\n

Mr Mwesigwa appeared calm and confident when speaking about his business.<\/p>\n

\"Boss
Mr Mwesigwa showed us his UK driving licence and said he was a former London bus driver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got like 25 girls,\u201d he said. \u201cMany are open-minded\u2026 they can do pretty much everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained the cost \u2013 from $1,000 (\u00a3738) per girl per night, but more for \u201ccrazy stuff\u201d. He invited our reporter for a \u201csample night\u201d.<\/p>\n

When asked about \u201cDubai porta potty\u201d he replied: \u201cI\u2019ve told you, they are open-minded. When I say open-minded\u2026 I will send you the craziest I have.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course of the conversation, Mr Mwesigwa said he used to be a London bus driver. We have seen evidence that he put that occupation down on an official document in East London in 2006.<\/p>\n

He went on to tell our reporter that he loved this business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could win the lottery, a million pounds, but I would still do it\u2026 it\u2019s become part of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Troy, a man who says he used to act as operations manager for Mr Mwesigwa\u2019s network, gave us more information about how he says it is run.<\/p>\n

Troy says he used to work as a driver and then an operations manager for Charles Mwesigwa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He says Mr Mwesigwa pays off security at various nightclubs so they will let his women in to find clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard about types of sex that I\u2019ve never seen in my life. It doesn\u2019t matter what you go through as long as his rich men are happy\u2026 [the women] have no escape route\u2026They see musicians, they see footballers, they see presidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Mwesigwa has been able to get away with running this operation, Troy claims, because Troy and others are not just used as drivers. He says their names are also used by Mr Mwesigwa to hire cars and apartments, so that his own name never appears on the paperwork.<\/p>\n

On 27 April 2022, Monic posted a selfie from Al Barsha \u2013 a residential neighbourhood popular with expats in Dubai. Four days later, she was dead. She had been in the emirate for just four months.<\/p>\n

According to Mia, Monic and Mr Mwesigwa had been regularly arguing in the period before she left. Mia says Monic had been refusing to comply with Mr Mwesigwa\u2019s demands and had found a way out of his network.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe 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,\u201d Mia says.<\/p>\n

Monic moved out to a different apartment about 10 10-minute\u2019 walk away. It was from this apartment\u2019s balcony that she fell on 1 May 2022.<\/p>\n

The final selfie Monic posted before she died<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Monic\u2019s relative Michael, who was in the UAE at the time she died, says he tried to get answers.<\/p>\n

Police told him they stopped their investigation, having found drugs and alcohol in the apartment Monic had fallen from, and only her fingerprints on the balcony, he says.<\/p>\n

He obtained a death certificate for Monic from a hospital, but it did not say how she had died. And her family were unable to obtain a toxicology report for her.<\/p>\n

But a Ghanaian man living in the apartment building was more helpful, he says, taking him to another block to meet the man he said was Monic\u2019s boss.<\/p>\n

Michael describes the scene when he got there and saw where the women were housed.<\/p>\n

He says that through the cloud of shisha smoke in the living room, he made out what looked like cocaine on the table and women having sex on chairs with clients.<\/p>\n

He claims he found the man we had previously identified as Charles Mwesigwa in bed with two women, and that when he tried to drag him to the police, Mr Mwesigwa replied: \u201cI have spent 25 years in Dubai. Dubai is mine\u2026 There is no way you are going to report me\u2026 Embassy is me, I\u2019m the embassy.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Monic\u2019s] not the first to die. And she won\u2019t be the last,\u201d he added, according to Michael.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Monic\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The phone number for her landlord, shared with us by Kayla\u2019s family, turned out to be one of Mr Mwesigwa\u2019s numbers. Troy also confirms that Mr Mwesigwa managed the apartment, as do four other women we spoke to for this investigation.<\/p>\n

Kayla Birungi, another Ugandan, also died after falling from a Dubai high-rise building<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kayla\u2019s relatives say that they \u2013 like Monic\u2019s family \u2013 heard Kayla\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

While Kayla\u2019s family was able to repatriate her body and hold a burial, Monic\u2019s remains were never returned.<\/p>\n

Our investigation found she was likely buried in a section of Dubai\u2019s Al Qusais Cemetery known as \u201cThe Unknown\u201d. It features rows and rows of unmarked graves, typically thought to belong to migrants whose family couldn\u2019t repatriate their bodies.<\/p>\n

Monic and Kayla were part of a wider, unofficial pipeline connecting Uganda to the Gulf.<\/p>\n

As Uganda wrestles with rising youth unemployment, moving to work abroad \u2013 mainly in the Gulf states \u2013 has become a huge industry that contributes $1.2bn (\u00a3885m) of tax revenue to the country each year.<\/p>\n

But these opportunities can carry a risk.<\/p>\n

Mariam Mwiza, a Ugandan activist against exploitation, says she has helped rescue more than 700 people from around the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get cases of people who have been promised to work, let\u2019s say, in a supermarket. Then [that person] ends up sold as a prostitute,\u201d she told us.<\/p>\n

Monic\u2019s family in rural Uganda say Monic always had the ambition to seek a better life<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Monic\u2019s family, grief is now tangled with fear. Fear for other families who could suffer the same loss they have, if nothing is done.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all looking at Monica\u2019s death,\u201d her relative Michael told us. \u201cBut who is there for the girls still alive? They\u2019re still there. Still suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BBC asked Charles \u201cAbbey\u201d Mwesigwa to respond to all the allegations made in our investigation. He denied running an illegal prostitution ring.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThese are all false allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told you I am just a party person who invites big spenders to my tables, hence making many girls flock [to] my table. That makes me know many girls, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said: \u201c[Monic] died with her passport, meaning no one was demanding her money for taking her. Prior to her death, I hadn\u2019t seen her for over four to five weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew [Monic and Kayla] and [they] were renting with different landlords. If no one in both flats was arrested or any of the landlords, then there was a reason. Both incidents were investigated by the Dubai police and maybe they can help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s deaths had not been properly investigated.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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