Alleged pimp suspended by Buenos Aires Jewish center

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — A Jewish activist in Buenos Aires accused of being a pimp was suspended from the city’s Jewish center.

Daniel Olkenitzky, 66, was suspended Tuesday from the AMIA Jewish center after federal police arrested him as part of an ongoing investigation into an organization he allegedly runs that recruits and manages prostitutes.

He was also expelled as a guest of the AMIA board, a category that allowed him to participate in some leadership meetings as an observer, but without a vote.

A federal judge ordered the arrest of Olkenitzky last week following an investigation of 24 apartments in which Olkenitzky allegedly managed a sex ring disguised as a massage business. On the day of the arrest, 19 women were freed from apartments located in Buenos Aires city, according to reports.

The investigation was launched in November 2014 after an anonymous accuser came forward.

“We decided yesterday to suspend him as an AMIA member” until the end of the case against him. “If he is found guilty we will expel him immediately,” an AMIA leader told JTA.

Olkenitzky hosts the radio program “Life and Music from Israel” and runs a website called “Israel in Buenos Aires.”

He was an honorary president of ORY, an organization for the Jewish disabled, which expelled him last week after the order for his arrest was announced.

Olkenitzky wouldn’t be the first Jewish pimp convicted in Argentina.

The Zwi Migdal group was a Jewish-managed organization that traded in women from 1906 to 1930. In the 1920s, Zwi Migdal had some 430 members and controlled approximately 2,000 apartments and more than 3,000 women. The Jewish community rejected the sex traffickers and they built their own Jewish cemetery in 1921.

In September 1930, 108 Zwi Migdal pimps were arrested on conspiracy charges; only three were convicted. The organization was shuttered a year later.