For the first time in its lengthy legal battle, Citic Pacific won a round yesterday when the Court of Appeal said police should not access six documents deemed confidential.
There is no evidence that the documents - including advice from Citic Pacific's law firm Mayer Brown JSM that it submitted to the Securities and Futures Commission - were produced to facilitate dishonest conduct, Mr Justice Michael Hartmann wrote in a ruling.
On its face, the steelmaker and property developer's 2008 case on raising loans from three banks without immediately disclosing its losses did not constitute dishonest concealment, Hartmann said in a 34-page judgment.
Even if there was evidence of dishonesty by any of Citic Pacific's directors, that doesn't 'indicate a dishonest purpose in obtaining the advice' from their lawyers, Hartmann said.
The Hong Kong-listed company failed to report a HK$15.5 billion loss from derivatives in September 2008 - the result of a wrong-way bet on the future price of the Australian currency.
The company announced the loss only six weeks later on October 20. By then it had raised HK$1.75 billion from three lenders - Bank of China, Industrial Bank of China and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.