Signage for the Hotel Lisboa, operated by SJM Holdings Ltd.
All the lawyers of the six defendants on trial for crimes related to the exploitation of prostitution and participation in a criminal organization that was allegedly operating within Hotel Lisboa submitted ‘not guilty’ pleas on behalf of their clients.
In Friday’s court session at the Court of First Instance (TJB) dedicated to the final pleas from both sides, the public prosecutor based her final allegations on the facts allegedly incriminating the defendants, which she considered to be sufficient proof, relying more heavily on the wiretapping than the testimonies heard in the courtroom over the past two months.
During her submission, she mentioned more than once that “the majority of the evidence has been proven by the wiretapping.”
She insisted that although it was revealed that the prostitution activities had been “managed for a longer time, from 2013 there was an obvious change in management,” she said. She claimed that the hotel staff involved had established “security and other privileges for the prostitutes.”
The prosecutor also alleged that the defendants “knew, controlled and lent support and services to the prostitutes,” affirming that “more than what was admitted during the court sessions, the wiretapping records from the investigation stage prove the relationship between several defendants, and [also the relationship] between them and the pimps and prostitutes.”
The prosecutor also said: “They had a duration, structure and there were points of contact between the members all working towards the same goal. The practice of the acts was done repetitively and for a long period of time.”
All five defense lawyers pled almost in unison that their clients were innocent, stating that there had in fact been some dubious pieces of evidence presented to the court and that none of the evidence had been satisfactorily proven during the trial.
Jorge Neto Valente, lawyer of the defendant Alan Ho (the former executive director of Hotel Lisboa and Stanley Ho’s nephew), commenced his final submissions by saying that it “looks like the prosecutor has been in a different court room over these past few months,” adding that “contrary to what was said previously there was no evidence that produced any proof against the first defendant [Alan Ho].”
Neto Valente also highlighted the fact that across all of the years when prostitution regularly occurred at the hotel, the authorities “were frequently investigating the hotel, [but] never acted in any way or tried to prevent the activities.” The lawyer added that the prosecutor’s accusations are mostly based on “morality” and not on “proven facts,” reminding the court that “morality is not a legal subject.”
Francisco Leitão and Vitor Gomes, the lawyers representing the second and third defendants (Kelly Wong and Peter Lun), performed similar speeches, saying that “nothing was proven in court” and “it is not enough for the prosecutor to say that she does not believe that they [the defendants] did not know about the illegality of their activities. It is necessary to prove it.”
Many questions also arose around the defendant lawyers’ final submissions around the charges of “foundation and participation in a criminal organization,” since in their opinion the prosecution was never able to prove their clients’ connection and cooperation toward a joint goal.
Neto Valente even added that “the prosecutor herself classified the activity as an enterprise or business activity, where the different defendants had different roles, and did not manage to prove any common benefit for all of them, which is an essential element of this crime.”
On this topic, Francisco Leitão also said: “If this was a criminal organization, it was a very bad one, because everything was accessible to everyone with no secrecy, which makes their plan a ‘stupid’ one.”
Leitão mentioned prostitution laws in the United States and other countries where, similar to Macau, the activity is not illegal. He used this comparison as a way to justify the Hotel Lisboa’s establishment of basic rules regarding the activity, just as several countries do, because in the region the government did not satisfactorily perform that task. “Private entities have to define the rules because the government does not perform that task. The Hotel Lisboa just wanted to ensure some governance that the government never wanted to produce,” Leitão said.
Vitor Gomes broadly addressed this topic, recalling that his client (Peter Lun) on two occasions reported the second defendant (Kelly Wong) to the Human Resources department for being late to work and reminded her that, “at the third report she would be fired.” This reinforces the defendants’ claims that there were no common interests among the different people.
At the end of the long session, the president of the collective of judges, Rui Ribeiro, stated that a final verdict would be pronounced during a final session of this trial, tentatively booked for March 17.
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