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Monday, July 14, 2025

Man accused of harbouring Venezuelan minors seeks bail

by

Derek Achong
2210 days ago
20190625
Chang Bao Wang

Chang Bao Wang

Abraham-Diaz

The Court of Ap­peal will de­cide next week Tues­day whether to grant bail to busi­ness­man ac­cused of traf­fick­ing two mi­nor Venezue­lan sex slaves.

Ap­pel­late judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mark Mo­hammed and Prakash Moo­sai re­served their de­ci­sion on bail for Chang Bao Wang, a Chi­nese na­tion­al, af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from his at­tor­neys and pros­e­cu­tors from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain on Tues­day.

In the ap­peal, Wang was chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of Mas­ter Shabi­ki Caz­abon to de­ny his bail ap­pli­ca­tion ear­li­er this month.

Wang was forced to ap­ply to Caz­abon as he was al­so de­nied bail dur­ing his first court ap­pear­ance be­fore Mag­is­trate Cher­ril-Anne An­toine in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court on April 1.

Pre­sent­ing sub­mis­sions on be­half of Wang, his lawyer Christophe Ro­driguez claimed that Caz­abon made an er­ror when she deemed him a flight risk based on the se­ri­ous na­ture of the charges he was fac­ing.

“The Mas­ter has low­ered the thresh­old in a man­ner that no ap­pli­cant can cross,” Ro­driguez said.

Ro­driguez al­so con­tend­ed that the Mas­ter did not prop­er­ly con­sid­er his client’s ties to T&T, which in­clud­ed his busi­ness in­ter­ests and the fact that he was mar­ried to a Trinida­di­an woman, who was seat­ed in the court. Ro­driguez al­so not­ed that Wang was liv­ing in the coun­try legal­ly for over a decade be­fore he was even­tu­al­ly charged with the crime.

He urged the court to con­sid­er the fact that deny­ing Wang bail would mean that he would have to spend sev­er­al years in prison be­fore he even­tu­al­ly goes on tri­al.

“Mat­ters take long in our courts,” Ro­driguez said.

In re­sponse, As­sis­tant DPP Tri­cia Hudlin-Coop­er main­tained that Caz­abon made the cor­rect de­ci­sion as she de­nied that the case would be pro­tract­ed and sug­gest­ed that pa­per com­mit­tal pro­ceed­ings could be com­plet­ed with­in one months’ time.

Wang and his com­pa­tri­ot Wei Liang Wu are ac­cused of har­bour­ing two Venezue­lan mi­nors for the pur­pose of sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion. Wu was al­so de­nied bail but did not chal­lenge the de­ci­sion.

Un­der the Traf­fick­ing In Per­sons Act, a per­son con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting the of­fence against an adult faces a min­i­mum fine of $500,000 and no less 15 years in prison. Those who tar­get mi­nors are li­able to a min­i­mum $1 mil­lion fine and no less than 20 years in prison up­on con­vic­tion.

Wang and Wu are among a group of Chi­nese na­tion­als to be charged over the mul­ti-na­tion­al pros­ti­tu­tion ring, which was bust­ed un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, ear­li­er this year.

On Feb­ru­ary 5, a team of po­lice of­fi­cers from sev­er­al spe­cial­ist units raid­ed pri­vate prop­er­ties and busi­ness­es in West­moor­ings, Wood­brook and Curepe.

One month lat­er, Chi­nese-born Guyanese na­tion­al Jin­fu Zhu and his 23-year-old Venezue­lan girl­friend Solient Tor­res were charged with 43 of­fences per­tain­ing to the raid.

The cou­ple was joint­ly charged with 22 charges un­der the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act for op­er­at­ing a broth­el at Zhu’s rent­ed home in West­moor­ings on spe­cif­ic dates be­tween Sep­tem­ber 17, last year and Jan­u­ary 1, this year.

Tor­res was slapped with 20 ad­di­tion­al charges for aid­ing and abet­ting pros­ti­tu­tion be­tween Sep­tem­ber, last year and Feb­ru­ary, this year.

They were al­so joint­ly charged un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act for be­ing in pos­ses­sion of TT$80,000, US$2,393 and oth­er small amounts of as­sort­ed cur­ren­cy, know­ing that the funds were the pro­ceeds of crime.

Zhu and Tor­res have al­so been de­nied bail.

Wang is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Pe­ter Tay­lor.


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