Timothy Tong scandal deals ‘distressing’ blow to anti-graft agency: Carrie Lam

The "upsetting and regrettable" scandal and criminal investigation surrounding former ICAC chief Timothy Tong Hin-ming have tarnished the reputation of the anti-graft agency, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said yesterday.

But the government's No2 official dismissed a suggestion for tighter rules to deter former chief executives, ministers and regulators from receiving benefits after they retired.

She also rejected a call to look at whether people who joined the civil service after 2000, when its pension system changed, might be more inclined to corruption.

Tong was appointed as a local delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Beijing's top advisory body, shortly before he was revealed to have spent lavishly on dinners and received gifts from mainland officials during his tenure at the Independent Commission Against Corruption between 2007 and 2012.

Referring to a Legislative Council report that condemned the "deplorable" overspending, Lam said: "The report revealed the inadequacies and non-compliances of the ICAC in the handling of official entertainment, duty visits outside Hong Kong and gifts during the tenure of its former commissioner.

"[It] inevitably undermined the ICAC's image and Hong Kong's reputation as a corruption-free society."