Four male illegal immigrants from the mainland and a local woman were arrested separately this month for their alleged involvement in illegal employment in Macau, Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Lam Keong said at a press briefing on Friday.
The five suspects comprise four illegal immigrants from the mainland – a 56-year-old who owns a decoration company in Macau surnamed Xu and three suspects in their fifties surnamed Feng, Tan and Liang – and a local woman in her fifties surnamed Pun who owns a residential flat which the illegal workers were decorating.
According to Lam, when PSP officers were patrolling Rua do Pagode near Rua de Cinco de Outubro on July 2 in the morning, they saw a man pushing a scooter in the wrong way down the street who was about to pick up another man. When the duo saw the officers they tried to escape. The officers managed to arrest Feng while Xu sped away on the scooter.
Under questioning, Feng told the police that he came to Macau in the middle of last month to gamble and rented a bed in a flat in Rua da Saúde in Iao Hon. He gambled away all his money and overstayed in Macau. He was introduced to Xu through a friend to work for Xu illegally in Macau.
Lam said the Public Security Police continued their investigation based on the information provided by Feng and discovered that Xu had no entry and exit records in Macau and assumed that he had entered Macau illegally. PSP officers took action last Tuesday. They arrested Xu in a decoration engineering company in Areia Preta and took him to a police station for questioning. Xu admitted to entering Macau illegally by swimming across the bay last August. A local man, who was still on the run at the time of the press conference, assisted him in renting a place to set up a company. He then hired mainlanders to work illegally in Macau. He provided them with five bogus Macau ID cards which he purchased for a total of 2,000 yuan (2,466 patacas) from a gang in Zhuhai. PSP officers later seized the forged Macau ID cards from Xu’s home in Avenida da Longevidade in Areia Preta district.
According to Lam, PSP officers went to the residential flat which was being decorated in São Lourenço district on the same day and arrested Tan and Liang who were working there. The duo admitted to working for Xu who paid them 900 yuan per day each starting last month. The female owner of the flat (Pun) told the police that she had been in Zhuhai for a long time and that she knew Xu through a friend. She asked Xu to decorate her flat in Macau. Xu’s quotation was 172,000 patacas, of which she had already paid him 100,000 patacas. She told the police that she did not know that Xu was an illegal immigrant who hired illegal workers.
Lam said the Public Security Police are continuing their investigation to track down the suspect who had helped Xu set up a company in Macau and the gang which provided the forged Macau IDs to Xu.
The five suspects have been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing document forgery and aiding and abetting charges, according to Lam.
This undated handout photo provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) on Friday shows evidence seized from the suspects such as five bogus Macau ID cards and other forged documents.
