Prudence Chan Bik-wah, the controversial former chief executive at smart card payment system provider Octopus Holdings, has re-emerged as the new general manager for international operations at Television Broadcasts (TVB).
Hong Kong's leading free-to-air television broadcaster yesterday said the appointment of Chan, who resigned from the Octopus group last August amid a privacy-breach scandal, was effective immediately.
TVB said that with Chan on board, it was confident the 'management team will continue to lead the company to grow from strength to strength'.
Chan, however, carries plenty of baggage for her part in the controversial sale of customer information to third parties by the Octopus card issuer.
In July last year, local lawmakers lambasted Chan and called for her resignation from the Octopus group for having initially denied, at a news conference, selling cardholders' data but admitting two weeks later during an investigation by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner that the Octopus group pocketed HK$44 million for sharing information of 1.97 million cardholders with six merchant partners between 2006 and 2009.
Chan in August resigned from the Octopus group, whose biggest shareholder is the MTR Corp, amid the outcry. She insisted that Octopus, under her watch, 'adhered to all laws and regulations', but added that the issue 'could have been better handled'.