A Chi­nese busi­ness­man, ac­cused of traf­fick­ing two un­der­age Venezue­lan sex slaves, has lost his third bid for bail.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing, Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Mark Mo­hammed and Prakash Moo­sai re­ject­ed the ap­peal, in which Chang Bao Wang was chal­leng­ing the de­ci­sion of Mas­ter Shabi­ki Caz­abon to de­ny his sec­ond bail ap­pli­ca­tion, last month.

Yorke-Soo Hon ex­plained that while Caz­abon made a mi­nor er­ror as she be­lieved that Wang had to prove that he was not a flight risk, she stat­ed that it was not fa­tal to her over­all as­sess­ment of the case.

“Had the cor­rect law been ap­plied, based on the ev­i­dence be­fore the court, the out­come would not be dif­fer­ent,” Yorke-Soo Hon said.

As part of the case, Yorke-Soo Hon and her col­leagues as­sessed whether he had so­cial ties to T&T that would have made him el­i­gi­ble for bail.

They not­ed that while Chang has been liv­ing in Trinidad for the past 11 years and got mar­ried, last year, he has nev­er ap­plied for cit­i­zen­ship or per­ma­nent res­i­dent sta­tus.

“In our view, this does not show that he has an in­ter­est in es­tab­lish­ing a nexus with this coun­try,” Yorke-Soo Hon said.

She al­so not­ed that if Chang was grant­ed bail and chose to flee to his home­land, he would nev­er be re­quired to re­turn for tri­al as this coun­try does not have an ex­tra­di­tion treaty with Chi­na.

“As he was al­leged­ly able to bring per­sons in­to the coun­try by il­le­gal means it is like­ly he would ex­er­cise such in his favour,” Yorke-Soo Hon said.

She al­so not­ed that in her sub­mis­sions, As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Tri­cia Hudlin-Coop­er claimed that the State would be able to com­plete the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in the case in one month. Wang was rep­re­sent­ed by Christophe Ro­driguez and Pe­ter Tay­lor.

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 choose to chal­lenge the de­ci­sion. Wang is fac­ing an ad­di­tion­al charge for al­low­ing his busi­ness to be used for gam­bling with­out a li­cence.

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. Wang and Wu were both ini­tial­ly de­nied bail when they ap­peared in court on April 1, but on­ly Wang chal­lenged the de­ci­sion.

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.

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 than 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.