I spent HK$6m to clear my name: Rowse
Retired InvestHK director general Mike Rowse has spent about HK$6 million of his own money to clear his name over the controversial handling of the 2003 HarbourFest concerts and hopes to finish a book on the saga by June.
'Hell, in my case, took the form of HK$6 million in expenditure, mostly legal fees, to pursue this case to an end. My lawyers tell me I'm likely to get back about half of that if I'm lucky,' he told a lunchtime audience at the Foreign Correspondents' Club yesterday. 'So for the privilege of proving the chief executive, the chief secretary, the secretary for civil service and, by implication, the secretary for justice and the financial secretary to be a bunch of wallies, the price has been about HK$3 million ... worth every penny!'
A civil service disciplinary panel fined Mr Rowse HK$156,660 and reprimanded him severely over the handling of the concerts. He then took his case to court and was cleared of wrongdoing in July last year.
To help revive the economy after the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, the government had agreed to underwrite HarbourFest by up to HK$100 million. The American Chamber of Commerce was given the job of putting the event together.
Mr Rowse described the saga as 'all political' and 'rule by the mob'. The series of concerts was too big to organise in too short a time, he said. Given the HK$100 million, the government should also have been a co-organiser of the event and not just a sponsor, he said, but that option was ruled out by Antony Leung Kam-chung, financial secretary at the time.
Mr Rowse's book on the controversy is titled No Minister: The True Story of HarbourFest.
Asked about conditions imposed on former civil servants seeking work in the private sector after retiring from the government, Mr Rowse said more needed to be done to prevent abuse of power.
'In other jurisdictions, what you are concerned with is this transfer of benefits. So you tell people you cannot lobby in the area where you were working immediately before you left the government.
'In other words, you must keep a distance from things that you were intimately involved with when your position gives you an unfair advantage. Apart from that, you're free to do anything you want,' he said.
There was public outcry last year over the government's approval of an application by former housing chief Leung Chin-man to work with property developer New World China Land.
