Jean-Claude Van Damme Named In Romania Trafficking Case

Criminal charges have been filed in Romania against actor Jean-Claude Van Damme.

A woman filed a criminal complaint with the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) against the 64-year-old Belgian film star, alleging that he had sex in France with five women trafficked from Romania.

However, the woman, Iuliana Cristina Dup, had no contact with Van Damme. Under Romanian legislation, people can make a criminal complaint without being the alleged victim in the case.

Newsweek, which has obtained a copy of the complaint, sought comment from Van Damme on Instagram and X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.

The Context

The case highlights the international scope of alleged trafficking networks. Romanian authorities are now tasked with verifying the claims and locating the five women.

What To Know

In Dup's complaint, which is in Romanian, she includes extracts from a deposition made by a woman whom Newsweek will identify by the initials L.D. This woman, a model, made a written deposition to a general prosecutor's office in Iași, Romania, on October 29, 2020, as part of a larger investigation into sex trafficking.

In that deposition, L.D. alleges that a Romanian businessman brought her and two other women she knew, along with five others she did not, to Cannes in southern France to work as models.

When they got there, they discovered that it wasn't the Cannes film festival, but a smaller festival partly organized by a Romanian fashion TV executive and which included Van Damme.

L.D. alleged that the five women she didn't know were given to Van Damme to take to his room as a gift from the manager who had brought them to the festival.

All five allegedly went with Van Damme to his hotel room at the same time.

One of her managers at the Cannes event told her that she was lucky that she had special protection and didn't have to do such things, she alleged.

She complained that they weren't given enough food, only small amounts from McDonald's, and that occasionally they would go to dinner with their boss' clients but this wasn't enough food either.

As a result, they felt weakened, L.D alleged.

What People Are Saying

Iuliana Cristina Dup's attorney, Adrian Cuculis, who is based in Bucharest, Romania, told Newsweek that his client is "one of the victims in another case of child trafficking and prostitution in Iași, Romania."

"She was a colleague of a girl, L.D, who went to Cannes."

"[L.D] saw directly that five girls Van Damme took to his hotel room," he alleged.

"We are trying to find those girls to make a complaint and speak out about what happened in Cannes," he said.

What Happens Next

The fate of the criminal complaint will depend on whether police can locate the five women who were allegedly taken to Van Damme's room.

Those women are not from Iași, where the allegation was lodged.