Lai See | The Prosecutions division is not rotten, says DPP
Readers may recall we recently wrote about the Prosecutions Department in a piece headed "Something's Rotten in the Prosecution's Department", in which we fretted over the numbers leaving the department and the implications for succession. The director of public prosecutions, Kevin Zervos, takes issue with this assessment of the department and says that nothing could be further from the truth. He says that in 2011 it is true that a number of people left but they were at or near retirement age.
These included Peter Chapman, Arthur Luk, Patrick Cheung, Ian McWalters, Mary Sin, Robert Lee, Thomas Law and Evena Chan. But he goes on to say that, "this was a concern we had to address in 2011 and we did so by recruiting talented young lawyers and implementing a training programme with emphasis on advocacy skills. I was making the point that whilst we are an office of young lawyers they are nevertheless doing an excellent job who have the qualities of being both highly professional and civic minded. The truth is that counsel of the Division are regarded as conscientious lawyers who are doing an excellent job".
He added that our piece had upset a number of counsel, "who are proud to be prosecutors performing an important public duty. I can vouch for their dedication and hard work. They work nights and weekends ensuring that cases are prepared and conducted properly and justice is delivered. Our criminal justice system is in good shape and to a large extent due to their tireless efforts". We may have been somewhat over the top in the tone of our earlier comments but the various people we had spoken to had expressed some disquiet over the situation at the prosecutions division.
What to make of Citibank's decision to cut six out of its 46 branches in Hong Kong as part of the massive 11,000 cuts it is planning. CLSA's Mike Mayo, Citi's harshest critic in the past, described the move as a "tremor" adding an "earthquake" is coming, likely ahead of the bank's April 16 annual meeting. This will surely have put a bit of a dampener on Citi's ambitions to chase after HSBC's lead in Hong Kong.