Next Magazine misses the mark in saying money, influence behind Leung Chuen-yan getting post at Karolinska Institute

The tabloid Next Magazine has the knives out for Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying again. But this time, it gets more personal than usual as it involves Dr Leung Chuen-yan, his newly minted PhD son.

The magazine accuses the senior Leung of a conflict of interest by helping junior get into Sweden's Karolinska Institute, one of the world's premier research institutes. It is also closely associated with the Nobel Prize selection committees.

But how? Lau Ming-wai, the chairman of Chinese Estates Holdings and son of disgraced tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung, donated HK$400 million to the institute. After that, the institute announced it would set up its first overseas research facility in Hong Kong.

Next alleged Leung the father helped facilitate cooperation between the two sides so he could secure a job for his son. But wasn't Lau the son, a legal scholar with a PhD from King's College London, a close adviser of Henry Tang Ying-yen, Leung's rival in the last chief executive election? He was, like most of his ultra-rich property peers, hardly a Leung fan.

The insinuation is that Leung Chuen-yan with a doctorate from Cambridge doesn't deserve his job at the Karolinska Institute.

But what kind of job is it? It's a post-doctoral research post, rather than a faculty job with a career track. "Chuen-yan is very talented, but scientifically he is still on a too junior level," a Karolinska spokesman said.

With his CV, Leung the son probably could get similar junior posts in many other prestigious-sounding - at least to brand-obsessed Hongkongers - research institutes; it's not that big a deal.