Tvb's Chan has case to answer, court rules
Top TVB executive Stephen Chan Chi-wan and two co-defendants have a case to answer on charges of bribery and fraud involving the city's biggest television station and five of its actresses, the District Court ruled yesterday.
The ruling came after it was disclosed for the first time in open court that Chan, TVB's 51-year-old general manager, and his former personal assistant Edthancy Tseng Pei-kun, 28, were arrested together in Chan's apartment in an early morning raid by graft-busters.
Lawyers for the pair and the third defendant, Wilson Chan Wing-shuen, 63, former head of business development for TVB's marketing and sales division, said after the ruling that their clients would not give evidence in court.
Senior Independent Commission Against Corruption officer Howard Wong Kwok-kay had earlier told the court that he and a team of officers arrived at Stephen Chan's duplex apartment in Astrid Tower 1, Argyle Street, Mong Kok, at about 6.15am on the morning of the arrest. No one responded to the doorbell at first and it took Chan 10 to 20 minutes to answer the door, the court heard.
When Wong's supervisor told Chan that they also wanted to find Tseng, Chan led them to the upper floor via an internal staircase, Wong said. Chan knocked at the door of a room next to the master bedroom, and said: 'Someone from the ICAC wants to find you.'
Dominic Cheung Ka-yiu, another ICAC officer, told the court: 'I think Tseng's room is a bedroom.'
The court heard that later in the day, Tseng told the graft-busters that he had his own flat in Ho Man Tin, which was under renovation. But he said he did not have the key because he had handed it to a decorator.
ICAC officers searched the Ho Man Tin flat the next day and confirmed that it was under renovation.
Judge Poon Siu-tong held that there was a case for the trio to answer on five corruption and fraud charges after hearing submissions on whether the prosecutors were pressing the right charges.
Stephen Chan pleads not guilty to conspiring with Tseng to receive HK$112,000 in bribes and defrauding TVB.
The pair also deny cheating the five actresses out of HK$300,000 in commissions, through a firm owned by Tseng, by denying them the chance to earn appearance fees.
Tseng and Wilson Chan also deny defrauding TVB of HK$550,000.
For Tseng, Wong Ching-yue SC, said prosecutors pressed the wrong charges against him under the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance in relation to the allegation that Stephen Chan had received HK$112,000 in bribes through a company run by Tseng for hosting a talk show during a 2010 countdown organised by TVB. He said the charges had been laid under Section 9 of the ordinance which was solely applicable to public servants.
Wong said Stephen Chan could be regarded as a public servant only when he was working in his capacity as a general manager at TVB, a public authority under law.
But he took part in the talk show Be My Guest using his other identity as a celebrity, and therefore the charges were not appropriate. He supported his argument by referring to TVB executives' evidence that they could not force Stephen Chan to host the talk show and that he was entitled to a nominal payment. 'If hosting the talk show is part of his job then TVB would not need his prior consent,' Wong said.
He asked why Wayne Lai Yiu-cheung, who attended the talk show for HK$20,000, did not break the law when he was a TVB contract actor, but Stephen Chan did.
Prosecutor Eric Kwok Tung-ming SC said Stephen Chan broke the law because he received the money without getting prior permission from his employer and that his act 'influenced and affected' the affairs and business of TVB.
Earlier, George Chan Ching-cheong, Stephen Chan's former supervisor, testified that it was a practice that Stephen Chan only needed to 'notify' him via e-mail that he would take up outside jobs.
George Chan said that except for the first time, he did not give written consent.
