Luis Moranelli
05/22/2021 2:08 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 05/22/2021 3:04 PM
He left the Chinese city of Fujian in 2005. He worked in the fields, growing vegetables.
His father had gone into debt and the money he earned was not enough.
He bet on Argentina.
He traveled alone and his first job was in the supermarket of an acquaintance, in La Plata.
Two years later, he opened his store in the City and brought his wife and son.
But things started to go wrong: Profits were meager and he suffered countless thefts.
A supplier gave him
a piece of information that excited him
: a Chinese merchant sold the goodwill of his supermarket in Lugano.
He bought it in 2014 with the help of two sisters.
He never imagined that this move would lead him to spend a year in detention, accused of human trafficking.
Lin Wan's story (51) shows that wrong police and judicial decisions can upset a life, to the limit of ruining it.
After spending 344 days in detention, he faced a process that culminated in May of this year with his acquittal.
"They built a cause based on prejudice,"
says their lawyer, Déborah Huczek.
The Chinese merchant was arrested in 2017. Four years earlier, the Airport Security Police had detected a package destined for China that contained
adulterated passports
.
That package had been dispatched from an office of the Argentine Post Office.
When they identified the person who made the shipment, they discovered that he had an address in Tristán Suárez and that in 2010 he had reported another address on Santander Street (the exact address is preserved), in Villa Lugano.
Lin Wan with his lawyer and the translator of the party who participated in the trial, after the acquittal.
After several discussions about who should take charge of the investigation, the file fell to Federal Court No. 2 of Lomas de Zamora, in charge of Judge Federico Villena.
The magistrate summoned the Human Trafficking Division of the Federal Police, which began with intelligence tasks at the premises of Lugano and Tristán Suárez, despite the fact that a PSA report had indicated that
there was no relationship between the two places
: Lin he had acquired the goodwill
a year after
the passports were seized.
The agents did not find the person they were looking for in either of the two places, but they began to report on movements inside the Lin supermarket that could be compatible with the crimes of trafficking and labor exploitation.
Then the policemen would tell during the trial that they had observed
a minor working in the box
and other people with oriental features doing different tasks.
They also mentioned that when the store closed, no one went out, so they concluded that they lived there.
With these indications, Judge Villena ordered a search of the Lugano supermarket.
It was on August 29, 2017. At the premises, they found the alleged victims of the crime: two men and two women of legal age, plus a minor under 13 that the police had seen in the box.
The investigation already demonstrated its first flank: that boy
was Lin's son
and was at that time in trade for the winter school break.
His mother, the merchant's wife, had traveled to China.
Based on the interviews conducted by the psychological organizations called by the Trafficking Division, who, in the absence of a translator, had to count on the collaboration of
an Migration employee who knows Mandarin Chinese
, it was determined that the alleged victims were relatives of Lin - two nephews of legal age with their wives - and who were subjected to exploitative conditions.
Judge Villena accused the merchant of deceiving these people with
fraudulent job offers
so that they would travel from China and, once in Argentina, house them on the top floor of the supermarket, in exchange for forcing them to do "long hours of work without receiving salary any".
In the request for elevation to trial, the magistrate clarified that it was not possible “to make a precise account of the events due to the difficulties derived from the
language barrier
and the reluctance to provide information on the part of those who, in this process, have been identified as victims of the events under investigation ”.
"Prejudice and xenophobic treatment"
The oral trial was in charge of the Oral Court N ° 1 of La Plata, integrated in a single person by Judge José Antonio Michilini.
It began on February 26 of this year and took place during 9 hearings, held virtually and in person.
Lin was released for trial.
During his statement, he assured that he did not know the man who had dispatched the parcel with the passports and explained that when he decided to buy the goodwill from the Lugano supermarket, he had to ask
for financial help from two sisters
who live in China.
Each of them put 20% of the investment.
Later, he explained,
his nephews
arrived
with their wives
.
He said he helped them buy beds, an air conditioner, a wardrobe and sheets.
He assured that they collaborated in the business without fixed hours and that the profits were distributed by 20% to each of his nephews, who controlled the investment of their mothers.
The accounts of the alleged victims - who testified without the presence of the accused and assisted by people from the National Program for Rescue and Accompaniment of People affected by the Crime of Trafficking - supported Lin's statements.
One of his nephews said that he had decided to travel to Argentina with his wife because some friends had told him that in the country
"it was very easy to generate income
.
"
Upon arrival, he stayed at the house of his uncle, who was in charge of the supermarket in which his mother had invested money.
He said he did not work there, although he admitted that he was helping with some tasks.
He said that he was studying Spanish near Plaza Miserere and that he could enter and leave the premises freely.
Then he explained that when his uncle was taken prisoner and the market closed,
they were left without income
and in charge of Lin's son.
The difficult economic situation forced them to ask for a loan and look for other income to survive.
His testimony and that of the other Chinese citizens identified as alleged victims, led prosecutor Hernán Schapiro to request Lin's acquittal and request that the police action during the raid be investigated.
According to the merchant, during the operation
390 thousand pesos were
stolen from him
that he had on the premises to pay taxes, services and supplier bills.
Judge Michilini decided to acquit the merchant and decided to lift the closure that until today weighs on the Lugano supermarket.
“As a result of bad police performance, derived from prejudice and xenophobic treatment, this humble merchant man was falsely accused of crimes that he never committed, and he also did not know the suspect.
He put them all in the same bag, just because he was Chinese,
”said attorney Huczek.
And he added: "Now we have to claim for the damages caused by the arbitrary detention and for having been unjustly accused and deprived of his liberty being innocent."
LM - GL
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