Bugging 'was in the interests of justice'
A former policewoman who secretly made recordings of police witnesses she suspected of collusion did not obstruct the administration of justice but rather helped it, a court heard yesterday.
Former constable Ng Lai-bing's actions convinced a judge to let her husband and other defendants in a vice case walk free.
She is on trial at the Court of First Instance for contempt of court for making recordings using a digital recorder taped under a chair in a witness waiting room at the District Court used by police who were testifiying in the vice case.
Her husband, also a former police officer, and eight other defendants in the vice trial, which lasted 130 days, were acquitted of charges of conspiracy to keep a vice establishment and money laundering when Ng presented the recordings, which raised questions about some of the witnesses' credibility.
Ng is facing the contempt charges along with a friend who helped her, Wong Man-chun, and a law clerk from the firm defending some of the defendants in the vice case, Yiu Muk-tak, who at some point learned of the recordings, although he did not know where they came from.
The secretary for justice had earlier argued that the covert bugging had hindered the administration of justice. But barrister Lawrence Lok SC argued that Ng had advanced it by preventing witnesses from collaborating.
Yiu's barrister, Toby Jenkyn-Jones, likewise said: 'That at least two police are now facing serious charges shows justice was being actively served, not interefered with.'
Lok also said police had acted in defiance of the trial judge's warning not to discuss their evidence and abused the use of the waiting room.
In reply to Mr Justice Alan Wright, who noted that the three defendants had waited six months before notifying the court of the recordings, Lok said his clients had waited in order to gain a forensic advantage and strengthen the case against the officers.
The secretary for justice, representing by Gerard McCoy, said the government, which had to pay costs to the defendants in the lengthy District Court trial, had faced a bill of HK$60 million.
Two police officers now face charges of perjury and committing acts to pervert the course of justice at the District Court.
Ng is separately facing charges of committing acts to pervert the course of justice and perjury, also at the District Court.
Ng, an officer for 27 years until she retired in 2002, had become suspicious that police witnesses were discussing their evidence and trying to frame her husband and the other defendants after overhearing someone tell one of them to 'nail' the defendants in the vice case.
She had asked Wong to help her and he had placed the recorder in the waiting room.
Judgment has been reserved.
