A RESPECTED tax accountant from Stretford led a secret life as one of Britain’s biggest pimps.

Rishi Gosain, 41, controlled dozens of prostitutes and secretly filmed himself having sex during sordid ‘interviews’ for work at his brothels, a court heard.

He raked in £90,000 from exploiting his workers, setting them up in apartments in Manchester city centre and Liverpool. A jury was told how Gosain, formerly of Rotherwood Avenue, Stretford, held down a day job as a qualified accountant.

But behind his respectable middle-class appearance, he was one of the region’s most prolific pimps, controlling 50 women, some as young as 16.

Prosecutor David Watson said Gosain ran a number of escort agencies.

But in reality they were fronts for the brothels, including one in a fashionable Manchester city centre apartment block.

Once the women were hired, they were given false names and asked to hand over up to 35 per cent of their takings.

Mr Watson described how Gosain had a controlling influence and insisted his workers had sex with him before offering them work.

He said: “It was a feature of the defendant’s way of carrying out business that he would often insist during these interviews that the women would perform sexual acts with him.

“However, many of the sexual acts were videoed on his laptop. This recording took place without the permission and knowledge of the women concerned."

In police interviews, Gosain said as many as 40 or 50 women worked for him and admitted having sex with ‘five or 10 of them’.

Alastair Edie, defending, said his client has lost his career as a respected and highly-qualified tax and management accountant following his arrest last March.

The dad-of-one, who has now been sacked from his job, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court to controlling prostitution and eight counts of voyeurism.

Two of the girls were found to have been 16 and 17 years old but two charges of controlling a child prostitute were ordered to lie on file after prosecutors conceded Gosain might not have known their true age.

Sentencing him to two-and-half years in jail, Judge Robert Trevor-Jones said Gosain had used his legitimate business skills to run his sex business.

He said: “You were effectively the person who was the brains behind the enterprise.

It was highly organised.” Gosain was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years. *

A FORMER shop worker has told how she was drawn into prostitution after falling under the control of Rishi Gosain.

The woman, in her 20s, said financial desperation led her into escort work, but that quickly led on to working as a £150-an-hour prostitute.

She said: “I needed help paying debts and getting back on my feet.

"I looked up online escort agencies and Gosain's website appeared. I filled in the application and sent it off.

"I was very naive and I just thought it meant I would go on dates with men. I found out that with many escort agencies, that's not the case.

"You're actually just a prostitute in a brothel.” Prosecutors said that Gosain grabbed between 30-35 percent of his workers' earnings.

After Gosain was jailed, she said: “I'm not happy with the sentence but I'm glad people can finally see him for what he is.”