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LONDON A lap-dancing club used as brothel where rich clients could buy sex and drugs in the heart of London's West End has been shut down after a six-month operation, police said on Friday.
Vice squad detectives arrested seven people accused of helping to run the basement Capricorn Club and raided houses in London and Essex on Thursday.
Scotland Yard said the private-members' venue, close to the British Museum and the Oxford Street shopping district, catered for wealthy customers, including financial professionals and other white-collar workers.
Despite its small, nondescript entrance on Goodge Street, the club soon built a reputation and began to make large profits, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
"(The club) was known to its affluent clientele as a place where sex and drugs were freely available," it added.
Newspapers said the club was a celebrity hangout, but internet reviewers said it was more like a seedy "clip joint," where customers pay large amounts to have a drink with a woman.
Clients paid up to 250 pounds to have sex inside the club or 300 pounds to go to a nearby hotel, police said. They had to buy a bottle of champagne for 135 pounds and could also get cocaine.
"It is hard to believe that in the middle of a well-known area like Goodge Street, these shady dealings were blatantly going on," said Detective Inspector John Anderson, of the Metropolitan Police. "This type of criminal activity is a nuisance and a blight on the community."
Police arrested five men and two women and seized cocaine and 2,000 pounds in cash from the club. They found a knife and knuckleduster in a car believed to belong to one of the suspects outside the club and seized 24,000 pounds and more drugs in east London.
Eighteen women aged in their 20s and 30s who worked at the club were being interviewed.
Three men, aged 45, 63 and 69, were arrested at the club, a 44-year-old was held in north London and a man aged 55 was arrested in Stansted. A woman in her fifties was detained in Mitcham, Surrey, and a 49-year-old was arrested in Hendon.
(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Steve Addison)