STA, 29 November 2018 - All seven suspects charged with running illegal call centres operated by trafficked Taiwanese citizens pleaded not guilty to charges of human trafficking at a pre-trial hearing at the Maribor District Court on Thursday.
The three Slovenians and four citizens of Taiwan are suspected of unlawfully detaining at least 63 people, mostly citizens of Taiwan, in several underground call centres in Slovenia and Croatia.
Six of the seven defendants remain in custody due to flight risk.
The trial is the result of a police sting in January. The subsequent investigation revealed that the call centres had been operated since November 2015. Illegal proceeds are estimated at EUR 370,000.
Related: China calls on Slovenia to surrender Taiwanese detained in phone scam
The prosecutor offered plea bargains in exchange for prison sentences of just over three years plus the confiscation of proceeds from crime. The foreign citizens would also be banned from entering Slovenia for five years after they have served time.
The trial is likely to drag on considering the large number of defendants and language barriers.
It hit a snag right at the start, when one of the Taiwanese suspects demanded an interpreter for Taiwanese Mandarin claiming that he did not understand classic Mandarin well enough.
The attorneys for two suspects also demanded exclusion of certain evidence that they claim had been unlawfully acquired in China and Taiwan.
The hearings will continue within 14 days.
The trial comes after more than a dozen house searches were conducted in Ljubljana and Maribor in late January looking into illegal call centres used to perpetrate phone fraud in China. The investigation revealed the call centres were linked with trafficking.
The house searches produced shocking revelations, as 32 victims of trafficking, most of them Taiwanese nationals, were found working in abysmal conditions.
The victims of trafficking were locked up into houses that doubled as call centres and accommodation, they were stripped of their documents, telephones and money, and ordered to perpetrate phone fraud.
They were not allowed to leave the houses even if they wanted to return home. If they did not obey the rules, they were physically and psychologically abused.
The investigation has also revealed the Slovenian handlers worked on instruction from a Taiwanese ringleader who occasionally came to Slovenia but was operating out of Taiwan.
