The own­er of Me Asia, the Can­tonese restau­rant raid­ed twice this week by po­lice and Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cers, will ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate to­day charged with sell­ing al­co­hol with­out a liquor li­cense.

Puy Wong Kong was charged af­ter of­fi­cials from the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit, Im­mi­gra­tion, po­lice, labour and health in­spec­tors raid­ed his busi­ness on Tra­garete Road, on Tues­day. The of­fi­cers al­so went to the restau­rant's Ari­api­ta Av­enue branch on Mon­day and shut the place down cit­ing health vi­o­la­tions.

Dur­ing the op­er­a­tion over the two days, three il­le­gal im­mi­grants were held. An ad­di­tion­al 18 oth­er peo­ple were ques­tioned and re­leased.

The ex­er­cise fol­lowed a tip to the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit that the man­age­ment of the restau­rant was not ad­her­ing to labour laws specif­i­cal­ly not pay­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Scheme and fail­ing to pay over­time to work­ers who had worked more than the 40-hour work week.