Sun City Group founder Zhou Chaohua's three appeals have been rejected, involving evidence of illegal gambling | gambling case | appeal
According to the Macau Daily, Zhou Chaohua, the founder of the Sun City Group involved in illegal gambling cases, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Macau Special Administrative Region Court earlier this year. He appealed against three issues of evidence earlier, which were all rejected by the Macau Intermediate Court.
The Zhou Zhuohua illegal gambling case had multiple evidence issues disputed through representative lawyers before and after the trial in September last year. The presiding judge of the original trial rejected the relevant requests on August 17 and September 27 of last year, respectively. Zhou Zhuohua filed two appeals to the Intermediate Court on this matter. Judge Chen Guangsheng of the Intermediate Court basically upheld the original view in the brief judgment and rejected the appeal.
In addition, some suspects and their defense counsel who were absent from the trial in the preliminary court have applied not to read the content of the interrogation transcript in court. Zhou Chaohua's side has also appealed against the practice of the chairman of the collegiate bench in the preliminary court hearing on September 28 last year. In the same judgment, Chen pointed out that the original court ruling did not take into account the content of the interrogation records of the seven suspects who were read out, and the 13th and 18th suspects were read out in response to their previous requests, so the reason for appeal is also unfounded.
Zhou Chaohua, who has been detained since November 2021, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Macau People's Court on January 18 this year and is required to pay over HKD 8.6 billion in compensation to the SAR government and venture capital. The prosecutor's office has appealed for an additional 21 and a half years in prison for Zhou Chaohua.