Lai SeeThe ducks are not talking to the chickens, says Steve Vickers

The row over the Hong Kong government's changes to the Companies Ordinance and the non-disclosure of directors' Hong Kong identity card numbers rumbles on. The move was condemned by panelists at yesterday's lunchtime discussion at the Foreign Correspondents Club entitled, "Will Corporate Transparency Survive in Hong Kong."

The basic issue - as we have mentioned here - before is that the ID number is specific to a unique person, unlike a name. It is not secret information, and is therefore not a privacy issue, which the government is citing as the reason for changing the ordinance.

"The ducks are not talking to the chickens," quipped panellist Steve Vickers, a veteran of corporate investigations. He pointed to the irony of new compliance requirements from regulatory organisations such as the Securities and Futures Commission, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, while another branch of government was seeking to make it harder to get access to the data.

"It's a dumb law," he said. "The new regulations will make life easier for money-launderers and for people involved in malfeasance."

He noted that since April last year there had also been a crackdown on the collection of basic corporate information by authorities on the mainland.

"The combined effect of what is going on in the mainland combined with the implications of the changes in Hong Kong are very dangerous," he warned. "It comes at a very bad time for Hong Kong, when we need more transparency not less."

Another panellist, corporate governance activist David Webb suggested that the privacy ordinance should be amended to state that names and ID numbers should not be regarded as private information.