Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Man & woman deny charges of human trafficking, theft, abuse & benefit fraud Judge tells Slovakian pair they’ll stand trial
A MAN and woman are to stand trial later this year on a charge of people trafficking, a court heard yesterday.
Tibor Kozlik and Bozena Stojkova – who are both 48 and who appeared at Belfast Crown Court using walking aids – each denied the offence.
The two accused, who are from Slovakia, have been charged with arranging or facilitating the arrival into the UK of a woman, intending to exploit her or believing another was likely to exploit her on September 10, 2009.
The charge was brought under the Asylum and Immigration Act 2004.
Via a translator, when the charge was put to Kozlik, from Seaview Street in North Belfast, he replied: “No. Not guilty.” When the same charge was put to Stojkova, from Clanchattan Street, also in the north of the city, she too replied: “No. Not guilty.”
Kozlik was also charged with stealing £1,100 from the same woman in September 2009, sexually assaulting her in May 2014, and blackmailing her on two separate occasions between December 2009 and May 2014. He denies all of the charges.
He has also been charged with fraud by false representation when he claimed he was the partner of the same woman and was entitled to apply for housing benefit for a property at Midland Crescent, when in fact he was not resident at that address and therefore not entitled to the benefit claimed. When this charge was put to Kozlik, he again replied: “Not guilty.”
He also denied a charge of intimidating a man “by
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force, threats or menace” to leave his place of residence between May 29 and June 10, 2014. Stojkova and a third Slovakian national – Svetlana Fatonova, 31, from Fort Street in West Belfast – were each charged with stealing wages and child tax credits from the same woman to the value of £3,150.75.
Both women denied the theft charge.
Judge David Mcfarland released the three on continuing bail and confirmed a two-week trial will take place on November 5.