Campaign donations to Leung Chun-ying were almost three times the amount received by his major chief executive election rival, Henry Tang Ying-yen, after an illegal basement underneath Tang's Kowloon Tong family home was revealed.
The revelation came in expenses details submitted by the two election candidates yesterday.
They also showed Leung, now the chief executive-elect, and Tang were each backed by different big businesses during their campaigns.
Leung's top donor was not a tycoon, however, but a group of Beijing loyalists called the Association of Experts for Modernisation.
They donated more than HK$1 million to Leung, their former chairman in the 1980s. Maria Tam Wai-chu, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People's Congress, is an honorary chairwoman of the association.
Political scientist Li Pang-kwong, of Lingnan University, said the figures showed the furore over the illegal basement in February had dealt a considerable blow to Tang's fund-raising campaign while boosting Leung's progress.
'However, it would be difficult to judge how significantly the increase helped Leung to win, considering that Premier Wen Jiabao's comments in mid-March - that he believed the chief executive election would produce a leader with majority support of the city - also played an important role,' he said.