Ting plans appeal against jail term
James Ting plans to mount an appeal against a six-year jail term for falsifying accounts at bankrupt Akai Holdings, reopening the books on Hong Kong's harshest punishment for white-collar crime in nearly a decade.
The former high-flier was found guilty in July of falsifying accounts at the consumer electronics firm that posted a record US$1.72 billion loss in 2000 and folded shortly after with debts of nearly $8 billion.
According to the Department of Justice, Ting has appealed against the verdict and sentence, but no date has been fixed for a hearing.
During the trial, Ting was accused of concocting a bogus investment in the summer of 1999 to inflate assets at cash-strapped Akai by $300 million. The prosecution argued that Ting was trying to trick creditors into believing the firm was financially sound by making fake entries in its audited accounts.
The accounts showed an asset - a 50 per cent stake in associate firm MicroMain Systems - that had purportedly been bought for $300 million. But the court heard that the deal was bogus.
In sentencing Ting, Madam Justice Clare-Marie Beeson chided Ting's breach of trust. 'The sentence is necessary, not just for the perpetrator but also to discourage others in a similar position of trust,' she said.
The maximum penalty for false accounting is 10 years in jail. But the government has a patchy record for securing convictions for commercial crimes, and the severity of Ting's sentence was rare.
In November 1998, stockbroker Arthur Lai Cheuk-kwan and four co-defendants were unanimously cleared of all charges in the Tomson Pacific fraud trial. The verdicts ended a multimillion-dollar, six-month trial, sparked by a four-year probe into the 1990 takeover of the World Trade Centre Group.
It was one of the longest and most costly ever brought by the government.
Former CA Pacific boss Jason Wong But-sit also walked free from the High Court in February 2000 after a judge suspended a two-year jail term for false accounting. A jury acquitted Mr Wong of stealing $248 million from CA Pacific Finance, money used to fund the $1.24 billion purchase of Central's Century Square in late 1997. While he and his wife were found guilty of making a bogus loan agreement, they received a suspended sentence.
In December 2001, ex-banker Ewan Launder quashed a conviction for accepting a $4.5 million bribe from former Carrian boss George Tan Soon-gin in 1980.
Launder was convicted on one charge at a second trial in March 2000, but acquitted of 12 others and served part of a five-year jail term.
