MACAU: Alan Ho, Accused Of Running Prostitution Ring, Is A ‘very honest and just’ Man.

Alan Ho (centre) is escorted to Macau’s Procuratorate by police.

SJM chief executive Ambrose So praises character of Stanley Ho’s nephew, who faces allegations that he ran a prostitution racket at the Lisboa Hotel.

Alan Ho, former executive director of the Hotel Lisboa and one of the six defendants in a “vice ring” trial in Macau, was described as “honest” and “just” in court.

Ambrose So Shu-fai, chief executive of Macau-based casino operator SJM Holdings, said the nephew of gambling kingpin Stanley Ho Hung-sun was a “very honest and just person” as well as “very direct and straightforward”. In that regard, “he almost doesn’t seem Chinese,” So noted, according to local broadcaster Radio ­Macau.

Such comments about Ho’s forthright character, So added, used to be repeated by many of his colleagues.

So appeared as a defence witness for Ho in Macau’s Court of First Instance on Friday. He said he had known Ho for over 20 years.

Ho, 69, was arrested in January last year along with five other people. Ninety-six prostitutes were also detained. Ho is facing 90 charges of sexual exploitation, and is also accused of founding and leading a criminal organisation.

The ring allegedly controlled 100 rooms in the Hotel Lisboa since 2013, making a profit of 400 million patacas a year.

So testified that Ho had always been professionally competent in his various roles, stressing his merits in several departments of SJM and its subsidiary STDM, namely as manager of several hotels and restaurants in the group, including the Hotel Lisboa, Grand Lisboa and the Regency Hotel.

When asked about the prostitutes working at the Hotel Lisboa, So said it was a business that had been running at least since the 1970s, long before Ho joined his family’s companies. So noted he was not aware of the hotel managing any mainland prostitutes.

Ho, who taught at the Chinese University from 1979 to 1985, holds a master’s degree in business administration. He then pursued a PhD in law at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After a brief stint at a law firm in the US, he joined his uncle’s empire, STDM, in 1991.

So said that he could recall Ho commenting that prostitutes ­affected the image of the five-star Lisboa Hotel, and that such an image should be changed. But he didn’t know whether the executive director of the hotel put in place any measures to tackle the issue.

The trial started on January 8. In previous hearings, former sex workers said that Ho used to interview and select women to work as prostitutes on the hotel’s premises, but none of them said they paid him any money.

Witnesses said that defendants Ho, former operations manager Peter Lun and former deputy manager Kelly Wang were responsible for running the so-called “young single ladies” scheme at the Hotel Lisboa.