Article on High Class Sydney AU Agency

The Sydney Daily Telegraph

February 9, 2002

Millionaires, private detectives and paying a high price for love.At Australia's most exclusive escort agency, the price of love can reach as high as $12,000 [$1AU=$.56US]a night.

Client contracts, relationship clauses, private detectives and entertainment agents -- welcome to the new world of the highclass callgirl. It was once as simple as picking up a hotelroom telephone and dialling an escort to your door. A quick exchange of cash and it was down to business. In the new millennium, a brief liaison with an exclusive escort girl can involve a mountain of paperwork. Long thought to have been nothing more than a glossy term for an oldfashioned industry, today some highclass escort agencies have taken the world's oldest profession to new levels. Agreements are no longer reached on the strength of a telephone call or assignations made by the sight of a red carnation in the button hole.

Some agencies require clients to sign contracts before a meeting with a girl takes place; it's pen to paper before body to body. The terms of some contracts stipulate a client cannot become romantically involved with any of the working girls. If the temptation to carry on a relationship outside such an agency proves too much, the customer is charged a $50,000 "introduction fee". It's all part of the modern changes sweeping the Australian sex industry. A contract of leading Sydney escort agency Miss Fleiss states: If the client requires the escort ... as a partner, wife, defacto partner, fiancee or mistress, the company requires an introduction fee of $50,000." "We see ourselves as an introduction agency, with a twist," Miss Fleiss manager David Graham says.

If a client hires one of the agency's girls for a position with his personal company within six months of meeting her, a scheduled placement fee of $150,000 applies. A "major fashion industry person" recently agreed to pay $150,000 after he appointed a former Miss Fleiss girl as his personal assistant. Simply asking for an escort's telephone number or personal details, with a view to contacting her later for a private meeting, can prove costly. "If I do this I agree to pay the company $50,000 for breach of my service contract," the agreement states. "I further note that if I breach this agreement I will be placed on the Miss Fleiss internet site [as a] banned client." Private detectives are dispatched to track down girls who suddenly leave the agency and if they are found working or living with a former client, he is sent an invoice.