AMSTERDAM - Amsterdam has launched a crackdown on "crime" kingpins in the city's red-light district that threatens to leave hundreds of sex workers out of work. And the city has solicited help from a slightly bemused sector - Dutch banks.
Amsterdam's authorities have no quarrel with prostitution, whichwas legalised in 2001, and they have no desire to shut down what is also a thriving tourist district.
"This is a frontal attack" aimed at cutting ties between prostitution and the underworld that uses the sex industry to launder money, Mayor Job Cohen told the Het Parool newspaper.
"One third of the businesses have been scrutinised, the other two-thirds will follow," Hendrik Wooldirk, a spokesman for Cohen, said.
The banks' role would be to finance "honest entrepreneurs" to keep the sex business transparent and break the stranglehold a handful of powerful bosses now have on the district.
But "the banks are not really chomping at the bit to finance sex businesses", said a spokesman for the Dutch association of banks, Hein Blocks. "Just because prostitution is legal now does not mean it is a respectable field."
Cohen is urging banks to approve loans for people wanting to set up their own brothels who now have to borrow money from the district kingpins.
So far, only one-third of the companies investigated have been deemed above-board and allowed to keep their operating licences. The other two-thirds, or some 33 sex businesses that represent 20 per cent of the total in all of Amsterdam, lost theirs. This last group runs about half of the estimated 200 storefront windows where prostitutes ply their trade.
Many of the sex clubs have filed appeals. They remain open for business pending the court rulings, expected in February. If the municipality wins, they will be shut down permanently.
