Cannes Film Festival prostitution scandal

We haven’t had a good high-class prostitution scandal since — well since Secret Service agents were caught in Columbia soliciting call girls on a business trip a few months ago. But according to The Hollywood Reporter magazine the Cannes Film Festival prostitution scandal puts all prostitution scandals to shame.

The Lebanese businessman behind it all is Elie Nahas.

Nahas, 48, owns a Beirut-based ‘modeling agency’ and used to assist Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi’s son Moatessem Gadhafi. Nahas was allegedly running a prostitution ring that supplied more than 50 women “of various nationalities” to Gadhafi’s son and other wealthy Middle Eastern clients during the world famous Cannes Film Festival.

The women involved in the infamous ring consisted of models, beauty queens, and full-time escorts. And the high-end agency was truly full service. They brought the women to hotels,  yachts, palatial villas — anywhere you could possibly want a prostitute — they would supply one.

A Paris-based anti-prostitution organization brought a civil suit to trial. Philippe Camps, the lawyer for the organization told The Hollywood Reporter magazine that some of the women were brought to Cannes under false pretenses and coerced into prostitution.

Apparently the price chart look like this:

High-priced call girls (putes de luxes) charge an average of $4,000 a night. While local streetwalkers normally get little more than $50 or $75 an hour turning tricks in nearby Nice. (That is quite a spread in price point).

Roger Ebert tweeted in 2010:

“Hookers stand out in Cannes. They’re the ones who are well-dressed and not smoking.”

During the 10-day film festival, an estimated 100 to 200 prostitutes walk in and out of the big hotels every day, according to hotel sources.

“They can make up to $40,000 a night,” says Nahas. “Arabs are the most generous people in the world. If they like you, they will give you a lot of money. At Cannes, they carry money around in wads of 10,000 euros. To them, it’s just like paper. They don’t even like to count it. They’ll just hand it to the girls without thinking. I know the system.”

“It’s all done with hand signals,” he says. “The guys signal their room numbers with their hands and the girls follow them.”

“Please,” says Nahas. “Every year during the festival there are 30 or 40 luxury yachts in the bay at Cannes, and every boat belongs to a very rich person. Every boat has about 10 girls on it; they are usually models, and they are usually nude or half nude. It’s drugs and drink and beautiful women. Go out on one and you’ll see. The girls are all waiting for their envelopes at the end of the night. It’s been going on there for 60 years.”

Wow!!! We will keep investigating this global situation!

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