Ban the heartless group trafficking? (9)

I believe the answer is:

bartering

'trafficking?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'ban the heartless group' is the wordplay.
'ban' becomes 'bar' (I've seen this before).
'heartless' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'group' becomes 'ring'.
'the' with its centre removed is 'te'.
'bar'+'te'+'ring'='BARTERING'

(Another definition for bartering that I've seen is " Trading without using money".)

I've seen this clue in The Telegraph.

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