Chinese masseur jailed on prostitution charges

A CHINESE man has been jailed for five months for earning money from prostitution from his employee in his massage parlour.

Diancheng Zhang, 40, had pleaded not guilty to pimping and earning profits from prostitution after police raided his massage parlour in Nicosia on August 2 this year.

On November 14, Judge Lemonia Kaoutzani had found him not guilty of pimping Li Hong, but did find him guilty of taking in some of the profits that she made from sleeping with some of the clients that would visit his massage parlour.

During the trial, the court had heard how Hong, a qualified doctor from China and now a political asylum seeker in Cyprus, was having trouble earning money.

Hong found a job massaging people but it wasn’t long before she began performing sexual favours in exchange for money.

It was then that she met Zhang, also a masseur, and the two moved into an apartment together.
According to Zhang’s testimony, she had told him that she would give him £5 for every client she brought her way.

The two then began a collaboration, where clients would turn up to get massages and, in some cases, sex with Hong.

Zhang was finally arrested after undercover officers had paid him £45 to have sex with Hong.

Jailing him, Judge Kaoutzani told the defendant that the court took into consideration his clean record prior to the incident, the fact that he was married to woman who works as a housemaid in Cyprus and the fact that he has a young daughter back in China.

The judge then jailed him for five months.

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