Seized triad 'behind death plot'
A Hong Kong gangster held on the mainland has been confirmed as the suspected mastermind behind a plot to kill a key ICAC witness whose gagged and bound body was found floating in Singapore harbour just days before he was due to give evidence.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption wants to interview Cheng Wui-yiu, who was arrested in a drugs raid by the mainland's Public Security Bureau in Foshan city.
He is wanted by the ICAC in connection with the murder of millionaire Hong Kong businessman Tommy Chui To-yan in early 1995.
Chui's trussed and badly beaten body was found off the Lion City's Clifford Pier on April 1 that year - just four days before his 39th birthday.
Court hearings relating to his killing were told that it was a ritualistic triad murder to silence a witness and to send a warning to others who opened their mouths.
However, ICAC agents admit the chances of Cheng being brought back to Hong Kong to face trial are slim at best.
If he is convicted in China of the drug offences he will almost certainly be executed.
'We would like to speak to him, we suspect he was a key part of the whole conspiracy,' said the ICAC's Assistant Director of Operations, Tony Godfrey.
Cheng, a member of the Wo On Lok triad society, is understood to have been picked up in a drug-making factory as part of an operation which netted more than 30,000 Ecstasy tablets, in excess of a tonne of 'ice' and several tonnes of P2P - used to make amphetamines.
The raid, earlier this year, was one of six carried out by the mainland police in Foshan, Guangzhou and Dongguan.
It is understood the operation was sparked by an explosion at one of the six drug-making factories.
Cheng was one of 34 people arrested in the raids which centred on an Ecstasy-manufacturing syndicate which was also selling the raw materials for making drugs to Indonesia and in the mainland's Jilin province.
Chui was murdered after he gave sworn statements to the ICAC about an $8 billion international cigarette-smuggling racket. Two men have already been jailed in connection with the case.
Fellow Wo On Lok triad Johnny Cheung Wai-ming, who is also known by the nickname 'Go Lo' or 'Tall Boy', was jailed for 27 years in 1998 for plotting Chui's murder.
In 1988 Cheung was jailed for 12 years in Scotland for planning a ruthless assault on the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Glasgow. He was released in 1992 and deported back to Hong Kong. He is set to lodge an appeal against his sentence in June.
The other man, Henfrey Tin Sau-kwong, who was branded a triad enforcer during his trial, was jailed for 5.5 years in 1996 for plotting to pervert the course of public justice.
Mr Justice Wally Yeung Chun-kuen described the plot as an 'elaborate and alarming' bid to frighten a vital prosecution witness into withdrawing his evidence.
Tin, who is now out of jail and still living in Hong Kong, had his sentence increased by one year after he appealed in 1997.
He is a close associate of sacked ICAC deputy director Alex Tsui Ka-kit.
Wong Kwong-kai, tried with Cheung, was acquitted, and two men - Cheng Hing and Lee Yiu-man - remain at large. They are thought to be on the mainland.
