For trafficking their nationals for prostitution, three Chinese nationals were on Monday June 22, sentenced to a total of 41 years imprisonment in hard labor by an Accra Circuit Court. The court found the ringleader, James Xu Jin, his wife Chou Xiou Ying, and Sam Shan Zifan, Jame’s younger brother, guilty of recruiting, transporting and harboring the victims for prostitution. James was sentenced to 17 years imprisonment, while Chou and Sam were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment each. James was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the charge of conspiracy and 15 years on the charge of human trafficking, while his wife was sentenced to two years imprisonment and 10 years imprisonment on the charges of conspiracy and human trafficking, respectively. Sam was jailed two years for conspiracy and 10 years for abetment. Their sentences are to run consecutively. Delivering its judgment in Accra on Monday, the trail judge, Mrs. Elizabeth Ankomah, held that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused persons acted together to recruit, transport and harbor the girls for prostitution and slammed their defense that they were running a restaurant. It held that the girls, who were eight in number, were “reduced to the state of slavery” by James and Chou who had deceived the girls into believing that they (girls) were to assist in running a restaurant business in Accra, only for their passports to be seized and for them to be forced into prostitution on arrival. The court ordered the deportation of the convicts after serving their terms. It also revoked James’s resident permit and further ordered that his assets should be confiscated to the state. It also ordered that the $14.560 which was found in James’s house on February 14, 2009, the day of the arrest, must be paid into the human trafficking fund and part must be used to pay the amounts James owed the victims. According to the court, the victims were recruited from Harbin, a city in China, under the guise that they were to assist Jin and Chou to run a restaurant in Accra for a monthly salary of $500 but on arrival in Ghana they were forced into prostitution. It is said James exploited the poor victims whom he claimed owed him for their airfare and other transport arrangements, seized their passports and also ordered them to pay a penalty of $50 a day anytime they refused to offer sex. The court further held that James misled officials of the Ghana investment Promotion Council (GIPC) and the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) and managed to get documentation to stay in the country to run his prostitution business and not a restaurant, as he had made those institutions to believe. According to the court, from the totality of the evidence, a tour of the brothel called Peach Blossom Palace and from the evidence of neighbors, it was clearly evident that James and Chou did not run a restaurant, as they had indicated to the court. It further stated that the names of two restaurants which were registered by James existed on paper only to deceive the GIPC and the GIS, assign that it also found that James and Chou saddled the victims with debts to further exploit them. The Court said it was also obvious that the debt owed by the victims forced them into a state of vulnerability, adding that it was also evident that the victims were put under bondage by the convicts. It also held that there was overwhelming evidence to the effect that Sam helped Jamnes and Chou and acted as the interpreter for the victims and their clients who were mostly Indians, Chinese and Lebanese. The court found that there was abundant evidence to prove that Sam sometimes drove the victims to meet their clients, opened gates for men to enter the palace, among others, and added that he “aided, facilitated, carried, promoted the act of trafficking and was paid $600 a month”. An investigative journalist, Mr. Anas Aremeyaw Anas, whose seven-month investigations led to the arrest of the accused persons on February 14, 2009, also gave evidence on the activities of the accused persons and produced video and audio tapes on their activities. Counsel for the convicts, Mr. B.O.K. Johnson, said he was yet to receive instructions from his clients on whether or not to appeal against the conviction. Source: Daily Graphic