The Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) has decided to dust off the files on the six defendants in the Hotel Lisboa prostitution case, taking it to the Court of Second Appeal, Portuguese-language newspaper Hoje Macau reported yesterday. The MP’s office, in a response to the newspaper query, said that they were within their limitations on re-opening the case, as the term would only come up at the end of this week. The defendants – one of whom is Alan Ho , nephew of renowned casino mogul Stanley Ho – had their criminal association charges dropped but were accused of financially profiting from prostitution in a court decision on March 17. In its verdict the Court of First Instance (TJB) considered the MP accusation as only partially proven, absolving the defendants of criminal association charges, and even going as far as pointing to possible errors in the investigation of the case, the paper reported. The decision to re-open the case from the MP comes after Kelly Wang and Peter Lun – two defendants in the prostitution ring case – appealed their sentences, as reported by Business Daily last week citing Radio Macau. Kelly Wang – the former assistant manager of the ‘Young, Single Ladies’ market at Hotel Lisboa – was sentenced to two years and five months in prison for her involvement and is the only defendant who, following her preventative prison sentence, still needs to serve time, one year and three months of sentence. Defendant Peter Lun was sentenced to five months and has already served 14 months. Defendants Qiao Yan Yan and Pun Cham Un were sentenced to seven months each for exploiting prostitution after helping Kelly Wang to find prostitutes and extort money from them, the paper reported, but like Lun were also freed following the trial, having served their time. Alan Ho, was sentenced to one year and one month in prison for one crime of prostitution exploitation but having already served 14 months of preventative prison time walked free following the verdict. No dates have yet been announced for the start of the hearings in the Court of Second Appeal.
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