Man charged with trafficking minors for prostitution loses bail appeal

A CHINESE man charged in March with harbouring under-aged Venezuelan girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation has had his application for the Appeal Court to review its previous position on bail, denied.

On July 2, Justices of Appeal Alice Yorke-Soo Hon, Prakash Moosai and Mark Mohammed refused to overturn an order of the High Court Master to deny bail to Chang Boa Wang, 37, on the basis he was considered to be a flight risk.

Last week, Wang’s attorneys Peter Taylor and Sheldon Guerra filed an application asking the appellate court judges to review their position on bail, since, according to them, there was a change in circumstance and new considerations the court should look at in the renewed application for bail.

According the Wang’s attorneys, at the previous hearings when bail was denied, the State gave an assurance that the magisterial proceedings would have commenced soon and the preliminary inquiry was likely to take a month to complete.

The attorneys say there have been at least five hearings, yet the case has not started. There are some 27 witnesses for the prosecution, eight of whom are Venezuelan and two of them will give evidence in court.

But, Soo-Hon said the court was “puzzled” by the application before she and the other judges dismissed it.

According to her, any “new circumstance” should have been related to the reason why bail was denied. Even so, she said the matter has to be taken into context since two translators were required in Spanish and Cantonese, the latter proving to be difficult to get.

“Everything is being done to get the matter on the way. The State is taking every step to do what has to be done. It is a complex case requiring much more than the normal circumstances,” she said, dismissing the application while calling it “misconceived.”

She also expressed the wish that the Criminal Division of the Appeal Court had the power to award costs when “frivolous” applications are filed.

“We should have that power.”

In their previous ruling, the three judges held that Wang’s was a “good case to deny bail,” and held Wang failed to show he had sufficient ties to TT and should not be deemed a flight risk.

They ruled that for the 11 years he has been in TT, he made no attempt to pursue citizenship or legal ties to TT and the business he allegedly owned was only registered in January last year. The judges also considered Chinese extradition laws, which do not allow for the extradition of its own nationals, saying if Wang was to be granted bail and returned to China, that country will not return him to TT for trial.

The court also took into consideration the penalty, if convicted, of a $1 million fine and imprisonment for not less than 20 years and held that it was a “powerful incentive to abscond,” if granted bail.

Wang was first denied bail when he and his co-accused Wei Liang Wu, of Guangdong Province, China, appeared before a Port of Spain magistrate on April 1 accused of the offences, which are alleged to have taken place earlier this year.

The two were arrested after a series of police raids in the Woodbrook and Westmoorings on February 5.

Wang and Wu did not form part of the initial group of 14 Chinese and five Venezuelans who were taken into custody during the raids, but were arrested at a later date as police investigations into an alleged sex trafficking ring intensified.

In all, 19 young Venezuelan girls, between 15 and 19 were rescued from a house at Western Circle, Westmoorings.

Wang and Wu were jointly charged with harbouring two girls for the purpose of prostitution. Wang, police said, was a former military commander in China.

Both men applied to a master sitting in the criminal jurisdiction of the court for bail but were denied.

Only Wang appealed.

Also arrested and charged in connection with the alleged sex ring were three other Chinese men and a Venezuelan woman, two of whom – a couple – were jointly charged with 42 charges under the Sexual Offences Act, including operating a brothel at a Westmoorings house, aiding and abetting prostitution, and an additional charge under the Proceeds of Crime Act.