Key Balkan Pimp
	THIS IS NOT the kind of relationship that exists between most pimps and prostitutes. Maks literally owns Lena and many other girls who service dozens of men a night at his command.        With civil war threatening to break out between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanians, Maks was encouraged to see prospective new customers. Business was off, and the Greeks who vacationed at nearby Lake Okhrid had failed to turn up for the summer holidays. Nobody comes to Velesta for the scenery. Only two paved roads wind past rows of hastily constructed brick buildings with shops selling produce and Chinese kitsch. Velesta’s main attraction is cheap sex — performed by beautiful girls kept under lock and key. MEETING METI        We checked into the Hotel Ekslusiv, where Velesta’s sex slaves are forced to serve clients. We caught a glimpse of Meti on a hidden camera in Velesta. Before we could even take our bags up to the sparsely furnished rooms, Meti came calling.Meti, another pimp and the owner of the Coca-Cola and Bela Dona bars just down the street, was eager to show us his girls. In his late 30s, with slicked-back hair, he is considered a kingpin in the Balkans sex trade.
					METI
		“You have to see my girls!” he said. “They are the best.”  We rode in Meti’s car to the Coca-Cola club, where he led us to the bar — a small room with seven tables blanketed in blue and red light. Meti disappeared in the back. We could hear him bellowing at the girls to get into their lingerie and come out front. Frantically, 11 women appeared, still putting on lipstick and eyeliner. “You can have any one you want. Or all of them!” Meti said over music blasting on the stereo.        Returning to the Hotel Ekslusiv, where we were left alone with the women, one — 19-year-old Olga — showed us a gruesome bite wound on her breast, inflicted by a client a month before. Throughout the night, women were herded in and out of the hotel by their pimps, who handed them over to waiting clients.                             Continue on next page