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Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Police want meth trafficking accused’s bail revoked

by

Derek Achong
581 days ago
20230913
The Residences at South Park in Tarouba.

The Residences at South Park in Tarouba.

Innis Francis

The po­lice have ap­plied to re­voke the bail that was grant­ed to a 24-year-old Chi­nese na­tion­al ac­cused of metham­phet­a­mine traf­fick­ing. 

Dur­ing his first court ap­pear­ance on Au­gust 15, Hong Fei Wu was grant­ed $100,000 bail by Se­nior Mag­is­trate Armi­na De­onar­i­nesingh. 

When the case came up for hear­ing yes­ter­day, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor act­ing Cpl Ger­vais made an oral ap­pli­ca­tion for the bail to be re­voked for breach­ing the con­di­tions set by her. 

Cpl Ger­vais claimed that al­though Wu stat­ed that he re­sides and will con­tin­ue to re­side in Gulf View, La Ro­main, for the du­ra­tion of the case, in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the prop­er­ty has been un­oc­cu­pied since March. 

Wu’s lawyer, Lar­ry Williams, has made an ap­pli­ca­tion to vary bail con­di­tions re­lat­ed to his ad­dress. 
Williams claimed that af­ter his first court ap­pear­ance, his client’s ad­dress was pub­lished by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS). 

“His ad­dress was in the news­pa­pers so he was scared for his safe­ty,” Williams said, as he claimed his client had al­ready signed a lease for an apart­ment in Mara­bel­la. 

He claimed that he could not re­spond di­rect­ly to the claims over the prop­er­ty his client claimed to be liv­ing at un­til the TTPS files a writ­ten ap­pli­ca­tion and pro­vides ev­i­dence. 

Williams al­so claimed that his client was con­cerned with com­ments made by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds about the case. 

Ad­dress­ing me­dia per­son­nel af­ter at­tend­ing a re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain last week, Hinds took is­sue with for­eign na­tion­als ac­cused of se­ri­ous crimes be­ing grant­ed rea­son­able bail. 

Re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Wu’s case, Hinds al­so ques­tioned whether he (Wu) fled the coun­try af­ter ac­cess­ing bail, as was done by three fel­low Chi­nese na­tion­als, who were sep­a­rate­ly charged with ke­t­a­mine man­u­fac­tur­ing.  

“The metham­phet­a­mine lab­o­ra­to­ry op­er­a­tor, one non-na­tion­al, was ar­rest­ed and much to my sur­prise and much to the de­mor­al­i­sa­tion of the po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved, as they re­port­ed it to me, the man, who was giv­en very, very eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble bail and God know if he may have left the coun­try as well,” Hinds said. 

At the start of the case, Williams said, “I rep­re­sent Hong Fei Wu, who is clear­ly in Trinidad, not abroad as Mr Fitzger­ald Hinds said, un­for­tu­nate­ly.”

Williams said his client “is not run­ning any­where”, as he ex­pressed hope that Hinds’ com­ments would not af­fect the out­come of the ap­pli­ca­tions. 

Mag­is­trate De­onar­i­nesingh gave the par­ties un­til Fri­day to file their sub­mis­sions and ev­i­dence in re­la­tion to the in­di­vid­ual ap­pli­ca­tions. 
She al­so or­dered Wu to at­tend his court hear­ings from the build­ing hous­ing the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court, as he was found to be in a mov­ing ve­hi­cle at the start of yes­ter­day’s hear­ing and had to go to the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion be­fore it (the hear­ing) was al­lowed to con­tin­ue. 

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Wu, who has been re­sid­ing in Trinidad for over a decade, was ar­rest­ed on Au­gust 10 af­ter Spe­cial Branch po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at an apart­ment in the Res­i­dences at South Park in Tarou­ba. 

The of­fi­cers al­leged­ly found 540 grammes of the il­le­gal drug in 23 Zi­plock bags in the apart­ment and in Wu’s car. 
They al­so found chem­i­cals and equip­ment sus­pect­ed to be used to man­u­fac­ture the il­le­gal syn­thet­ic drug that is pop­u­lar in the Unit­ed States but rel­a­tive­ly un­known in T&T com­pared to co­caine and MD­MA. 
A quan­ti­ty of cash and elec­tron­ics in­clud­ing cell phones, tablets, and drones were al­so seized by po­lice. 

Wu was not called up­on to plead to the drug traf­fick­ing charge as it (the charge) would be pros­e­cut­ed in­dictably (be­fore a judge and ju­ry or a judge alone).

Wu is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Toni Roberts.


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