Partners in crime

Daniel Leuenberger

Sasha Fradis AKA Alexander Fradis

Sasha Fradis of Chisinau and Daniel Leuenberger of Reconvilier, Switzerland originally worked together operating a child pornography agency out of Odessa, Ukraine know as "Studio 13 Arts," only narrowly managing to escape the Ukraine before they could be arrested.

According to this document, it appears that Fradis and Leuenbergers child pornography operation began unraveling when some of the girls they were transporting from Chisinau to be photographed were intercepted by authorities:

However, the girls said that they were paid 25-50$ by two foreigners named Alexander and Daniel for being photo- and videoshooted naked.

The document elaborates further about what went on:

She told me that Sasha sleeps with Rina (whose 11-years old), though he is many years older that she is, and his looks are just terrible. In some time I saw myself how everything went on…The girls said that Sasha was a finished drug addict. The drugs were kept in a two-storeyed mansion in Sasha’s room where the computers were. The high fence was covered with wire, at the entrance gate – some kind of a TV-set, and through it the picture went into Sasha’s room. Four guards, who worked in shifts, lived in the one-storeyed house”.

Then came Daniel who spoke very bad Russian. We hardly understood that we had to be photographed in those poses which they would tell us – our pictures would be displayed at the exhibitions and placed in foreign magazines. He also said nobody had to and won’t know what we were doing. And for this job we would be paid good money.

Fradis and Leuenberger would use the desperate financial situation faced by the families of these children as a means to sexually exploit them and take advantage of them:

“Lisa had her pictures taken in all poses she was “ordered”, said Lana. “Even the way you could see everything… I was photographed in a sheet (beneath I was naked) with the music on. After some time I got used to that, and started letting it down a little, and then let it down at all… Honestly, I felt greatly ashamed, but they would pay such money which my mother wouldn’t get in a year!

Usually we stayed at Sasha’s for two-three days (from Friday till Sunday). After we’ve satisfied all his demands he would give us 50 dollars”

“Sasha used to offer me cigarettes, wine, drugs. Once he gave me a pack of pills, about six, without any name on it and said, “Take it and have fun. You’ll be jolly, free, and you can do whatever you want to. It’s nice and pleasant…” I answered, I was fine without it. I tried a cigarette – I didn’t
like it. I got a proposal to “have some love” from a guard, a former militiaman…”

Somewhere along the line things grew sour between Fradis and Leuenberger and they split:

When the thunder burst out, inventive Alexander decided to shoulder all the responsibility on his former sidekick. In a letter, placed at one of the sites he calls Daniel pretender, pathologic informer, scandalmonger, rascal, thief, and other “complimentary” epithets. Moreover, he appeals to everyone and everything not to cooperate with his former pal: the latter is, he says, extremely dangerous…

After the split occurred it sounds as though Fradis set up a new child pornography agency known as "Astral Studio," where he continued to sell the content originally produced for "Studio 13 Arts." Leuenberger went on to set up a non-nude child modeling agency for pedophiles known as "Swissarts," which he operated out of Moldova up until 2007.

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