On October 28, the Macau Court of Final Appeal upheld an eight-year prison sentence imposed on Alan Ho, former director of the Hotel Lisboa, for crimes including exploitation of prostitution. Ho is the nephew of the late gaming magnate Stanley Ho.
In a ruling, the court dismissed the appeals filed by the defendant. He was sentenced for founding and leading a criminal association, being part of a criminal association and the prostitution charge.
Macau Business reports that in 2016, Ho was initially sentenced to 13 months’ imprisonment after a trial with five other defendants for “pimping at the Hotel Lisboa,” which is owned by the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau (STDM). At the time, he and his co-defendants were acquitted of the crime of criminal association. But in December 2019, the sentence was increased to eight years for the crime of founding and leading a criminal association, according to TDM-Radio Macau.
Macau Business described the prostitution ring as “the largest pimping case in Macau since the transfer of sovereignty in 1999 from Portugal to China.”
