Two men were arrested in a hotel in Zape on Thursday for their alleged involvement in a burglary with three other male accomplices in the northern district the day before, Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesman Ho Chan Nam said at a special press conference on Friday.
The duo comprise a 47-year-old local jobless man surnamed Fan and a 32-year-old non-resident worker from the mainland surnamed Chen who told the police that he works as a chef.
There are two victims – a 47-year-old local man surnamed Iao and a 36-year-old Hong Kong woman surnamed Tsang.
According to Ho, the Public Security Police (PSP) referred a case to the Judiciary Police on Wednesday that a flat on the lower floor of a tenement building in the northern district had been burgled. Ho said that the victim surnamed Tsang has been renting the flat for five months to store parallel trading goods (水貨). PJ officers confirmed that the victim surnamed Iao moved 21 computer tablets, five laptop computers, over 40 boxes of bird’s nests weighing a total of 36 kilogrammes and over a dozen bottles of makeup foundation to the flat on Tuesday night. When Tsang returned to the flat the next day, she discovered that the locks of the flat’s metal and wooden doors were broken and all the goods which Iao moved into the flat the day before as well as a video game console were gone. Iao reported a total loss of 670,000 patacas while Tsang reported a loss of 2,850 patacas.
Ho said that the Judiciary Police identified the five men as suspects and discovered that three of the five, who were still on the run at the time of the press conference, had arrived at the door of the flat on Wednesday. They used hard objects to pry open the doors and removed large quantities of goods. On Thursday morning, two of the three men took a taxi with the goods and met Chen in a quiet area in Largo do Matadouro in Coloane (路環屠場前地). They handed the goods to Chen who then took another taxi to the hotel in Zape. Chen then gave the goods to Fan who kept the stolen items in his guestroom.
According to Ho, PJ officers put the suspects under surveillance near the hotel and arrested Chen and Fan later that day. The officers seized the goods in Fan’s room. The duo refused to cooperate with the police. The Judiciary Police believe, Ho said, that the duo are parallel traders who got to know that the smuggled goods were kept in the flat. At the time of the press conference, the Judiciary Police were still looking for the other three accomplices.
Chen and Fan were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) on Friday, facing aggravated theft charges, according to Ho.
The two suspects are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters to a PJ vehicle on Friday. Photo courtesy of TDM
