Lawyers protecting a celebrity English tutor accused of bribing a former marking assistant for private Hong Kong exam information were granted more time to assemble their case after prosecutors withdrew a contentious fee towards the pair. Kris Lau Koon-wah, 43, and Seraph Wong Tsz-hin, 19, a pupil who formerly labored as a marking assistant with the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, were originally accused of having access to a computer with dishonest rationale. But prosecutors withdrew the two counts after the city’s top court docket unanimously ruled final month that the price should not follow to a defendant’s very own phone or computer, as it might have within the gift case.
That leaves a very last charge of conspiracy for an agent to accept an advantage, alleging Wong widespread HK$1,000 (US$130) from Lau between April 17 and May thirteen, 2017, to reveal private information from the English Listening and Integrated Skills paper of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) administered via the examination authority. However, the defense recommends requesting another adjournment to discover different approaches to handling the case and acquire files covering bankers’ affirmations and WhatsApp messaging logs.
West Kowloon Court Magistrate Cheung Kit-yee adjourned the case to July 3.
The case came on the heels of a comparable one regarding every other A-list teacher, Weslie Siao Chi-young, forty-two, in which prosecutors sought to update the same computer offense with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. Both prosecutions have been previously placed on maintenance following a comparable case involving four instructors accused of leaking entrance examination questions, in which the High Court determined it difficult for prosecutors to rely on the offense of acquiring access to a computer when a defendant had used their tool.
Gaming mogul Stanley Ho Hung-solar’s sister-in-law had a sad marriage when she first met the Hong Kong legitimate. She was accused of bribing, the District Court heard on Tuesday. That ruling unanimously upheld ultimate month through 5 Court of Final Appeal judges. Seven cellphone-related cases have since been affected, with the contentious price amended or withdrawn.
Businesswoman Cheyenne Chan Ung-ok, 63, has denied imparting a bonus to a public servant in the form of a HK$510,000 (US$ sixty-five,000) deposit for Wilson Fung Wing-yip’s purchase of a flat at One Robinson Place on Robinson Road inside the Mid-Levels. Fung, fifty-five, the former deputy secretary for financial development and labor, has pleaded no longer guilty to 1 fee of a public servant accepting an advantage and any other misconduct in public office. He is married to Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, who heads the authorities’ Policy Innovation and Coordination Office.
Chan suggests that Selwyn Yu SC called his purchaser a housewife loyal to her family and submissive to her husband. Yu discovered Chan “misplaced the center of her existence” while she observed her husband change into having an affair and skilled home violence around 2002 to 2003. She has become depressed,” Yu stated. They used to be an intimate couple,” Ha said. “Later, they had rarely been visible collectively.
The change delivered Chan to tears.
- Prosecutors stated the defendants met in 2003, and Fung made repeated selections beneficial to Chan’s aviation businesses from September 2004 to July 2006 without disclosing their private dealings to each person.
- Joseph Tse Wah-yuen SC, defending Fung, stated Chan started investing in extra houses in 2004, displaying the courtroom purchases for Jade Garden on Robinson Road and Bowen Place on Bowen Road.
- On each occasion, Chan received a reduction on the agent’s belongings fee expenses because she had become an ordinary client.
- A comparable bargain was supplied for the purchase of One Robinson Place, reducing the fee from HK$102,000 to HK$51,000.
- Parties no longer dispute Chan settled the fee on September 28, 2004, using a cheque from her private HSBC account.
- Prosecutor Maggie Wong Pui-Kei SC stated the call of the authentic purchaser became crossed out in the provisional agreement for the HK$10.2 million Mid-Levels flat and replaced by using Fung’s complete English call, with a signature beside it.
- Chan’s then-private secretary, Maria Chui Mei-yee, identified her organization’s initials beside Fung’s call inside the document.
- Chui advised the courtroom she did not recognize any details of the businesswoman’s dating with Fung.
- Ha, a solicitor, said he did not realize Fung till Chan told him to deal with the transaction of One Robinson Place.
- “To my recollection, Ms. Chan called to say a friend needed help managing the sale and purchase,” Ha stated.
- Chan has been a director at Heli HK since 1998, later renamed HK Express in 2004.
- The trial remains earlier than district judge Douglas Yau Tak-hong on Thursday.
