Advertisement
Advertisement
Carson Yeung
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
Birmingham City Football Club boss Carson Yeung Ka-sing

Judge rules Carson Yeung's trial will go on

District Court finds missing documents from securities companies will not hinder fair hearing

Carson Yeung

The District Court yesterday dismissed an application by Birmingham City Football Club boss Carson Yeung Ka-sing to halt his HK$721 million money laundering trial.

The hairdresser turned soccer tycoon applied to the District Court on Monday for a permanent stay of proceedings, citing police abuse of process.

His lawyer Graham Harris SC also argued that some missing records would deprive Yeung of the chance of a fair trial.

Handing down his ruling, District Judge Douglas Yau Tak-hong said the defence failed to prove that the missing documents from seven securities companies - amended from an initial eight - that Yeung had traded with would result in an unfair trial.

He said the defence did not say whether there could be witnesses who could give evidence about large-scale cash dealings in securities.

"One would expect that cash transactions involving tens of millions of dollars should be relatively hard to forget, especially when the defendant seems to be suggesting that there had been copious amounts of trading resulting in his not insignificant accumulation of wealth," Yau said.

He also said the defence had failed to prove that there was abuse of process by the police.

Yeung's lawyer had accused officers of failing to retain the documents when investigating the securities companies.

The judge said it was reasonable for police to focus on investigating the money flow in the bank accounts ahead of the sum between the banks and the seven securities companies as they were relatively small amounts.

Yau said even if the records from the securities companies had been kept and made available, there was still a burden on the defendant to prove where the cash had come from.

The case opened briefly after the judge's decision.

Yau adjourned the case until Tuesday, as Graham said his side needed time to finalise an expert report expected to be completed by Monday noon.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Judge rules Carson Yeung's trial will go on
Post