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5.4 The use of the proceeds of exploitation ofprostitution: legal and illegal activitiesOne of the more delicate questions facing the illegal traffic where aconsiderable amount of money is earned, concerns the way in which the proceedsare used. The traffic for sexual exploitation from Nigeria produces considerableavailability of money if it is considered that the money earned from the payment ofboard, lodging and rent of the so-called joint, together with the “work”(notwithstanding the fact that Nigerian women inside the prostitution market aretoday at the lowest grade of the available offer) amounts, for each exploitedwoman, to a considerable monthly sum, of at least 2,000 Euros 63 .How is this money used? Is it re-invested in the same illegal activity, in otherillegal activities or “cleaned” thanks to its use in legal activities?Re-investment in prostitution: the contribution or osusu 64The first classic way of utilising the earnings from an illegal activity is to reinvestthe money in the same illegal activity: certainly in the case of exploitation ofprostitution of women of Nigerian origin, this happens regularly.During many local searches, undertaken during investigations, hardly ever havelarge sums of money been found, even if numerous documents and declarationsattest that these earnings, even huge, have been made.Telephone intercepts have clarified the first way of concealing money and reinvestment:the contribution or osusu.It is a type of common petty cash, the result of an agreement with a group ofmadams, which consists in periodic deposits of a sum of money on the part of each,on an agreed specific date, and the possibility to use the total amount of the moneyinvested given in turn to one. This continues until all the members have eachbenefited from the money accumulated.In this way each of them participating in osusu, may have a large sum. Themadam when it is her turn, can then pay debts or acquire new girls to exploit inprostitution more quickly than she could if she had to “save” on her own the moneynecessary for self-financing the “business”. At the same time, in this way themoney “vanishes” more rapidly, diminishing the risk that it is intercepted by thepolice or is stolen.Sometimes the madams have some difficulty to respect the date of availabilityforeseen for the contribution: “A. calls B. to say that she has sent to the Ghanaian63For food, lodging and rent of the joint an amount of 500 Euros at least is requested (that can becomevery much higher if the joint is particularly expensive); to that must be added the profits from theprostitution activity, which assumes not very high earnings of 50 Euros per day, which makes around1,500 Euros per month.64The terminology “contribution” is used in criminal proceedings of the Public Prosecutor of Turin, theterm “osusu” is that of Naples because that is how it is called by the madams in the telephone intercepts.