A man and a woman have been jailed for seven years after being convicted of human trafficking, exploiting two workers and keeping them in conditions described by a magistrate as approaching 'refined slavery'.

The court also ordered the confiscation of four massage parlours which were used as brothels.

The accused were Winston-Joseph Gera and his partner Zhang Tianxia.

Police began investigating the case after one of the two female employees filed a police report, accompanied by an official from the Chinese embassy.

The court heard how the two women were brought to Malta in 2017  to work as massage therapists but had their passports taken from them on arrival.

They were forced to live in the parlours where they worked, in primitive conditions, for very long hours every day without days off and leave, and forced to give sexual favours to clients.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech after hearing evidence, observed that as soon as the two women arrived in Malta they were subjected to "a regime of strict control which saw them continually monitored, day and night, restricted in what they could do and not do, even in their free time - if sleeping time could be described as such since the rest of their time was spent working to grow the business for Gera and  Tianxia."

The court said the control exercised on the two workers was "total". Although no physical force was used, there had been psychological force.

Gera imposed a 'tax' on the workers if they wanted to live elsewhere, meaning that apart from having to pay rent for living in the massage parlours they had to pay an additional €30 "not to submit themselves to the hardship imposed on them by Gera," something they could not afford.

The fact that their passports were taken from them meant they could not free themselves from the control of the accused.

The employees had ended up dependant on a job which was a situation "closely approaching refined slavery" the court said.

It observed that the employees were also controlled in what they wore, so that the massage parlours became brothels. The women, the court observed, had been "shorn of their dignity to become a commodity in the hands of the accused." 

There was no doubt, the court said, that the workers had been exploited "to the maximum" and the conditions they lived in were sub-standard and inhuman.  

In jailing the two accused, the court also ordered the confiscation of  Tian Oriental Massage Parlour, Yuan Oriental Massage Parlour, Mandarin Oriental Massage Parlour and Oriental Massage Parlour.