PJ Investigator tells of source in Lisboa prostitution ring

The trial of six defendants who were accused of collectively participating in a prostitution ring operating inside Hotel Lisboa, and which includes the former executive director of the hotel, Alan Ho, continued on Friday with several testimonies.
The highlight of the day was the hearing of Fong Kam Chiu, the Judiciary Police (PJ) investigator who initiated the investigation of this case.
Fong revealed that the tip-off was given to him in person when he went to Hotel Lisboa in search of three other people.
After being insistently questioned by judge Rui Ribeiro, Fong finally revealed that the tip-off came from one of the managers in the hotel – Leo Ieong. Ieong is already a witness in this case, although his statements have not yet been heard.
According to Fong, the tip corroborated the two or three anonymous letters they had previously received.
Fong mentioned that there had been a change in the attitudes of Hotel Lisboa management towards the police.  This allegedly occurred after Wong started working there. “The hotel staff stopped providing help to the police investigators during their raids in the hotel and started requesting search warrants which would allow them inside the hotel rooms,” he said.
Another of the highlights was the hearing of Yang Chao Yu, one of the few witnesses residing in mainland China, who was in attendance to give her testimony in the courtroom.
The witness was visibly uncomfortable as she identified the defendants whom she knew.  She revealed a few more details of the case, namely the procedures related to the way the number of prostitutes were controlled in the “walking area”.  According to Yang, a “lucky draw” of the room cards was used to achieve this end. Although she was unable to specifically identify the individuals responsible for this task, she was able to reveal the presence of the second defendant Kelly Wong in the draw.
She was also able to identify both Alan Ho and Kelly Wong as the people in charge of the “check-
in counter”, where the girls had to request and renew the rooms, despite claiming to have no prior knowledge of them or their positions and functions at the hotel.
She also claimed that she never provided payment to anyone in order to be able to provide sexual services, saying that she learned the rules from her own intuition and from information she obtained from other women in similar roles.
The trial resumes today.