1977  Seconded to Independent Commission Against Corruption

1978  Secretary on inquiry committee looking into closure of Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School

1983  Earns master’s in public administration from Harvard University

1986  Secretary general of Office of the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils

1991  Director of New Airport Project Coordination Office

1992  Commissioner of transport

1996  Secretary for financial services

1998  Intervenes in stock market amid Asian financial crisis

2000  Quits government to head Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority. Borrows unsecured loan of HK$900,000 from SHKP subsidiary Honour Finance

2001  Turns down chief executive Tung Chee-hwa’s invitation to be financial secretary. Secures HK$1.5 million tax loan from Honour Finance. Renews MPFA lease at Central’s One IFC, which SHKP co-owns. Wife Teresa starts to discuss with interior designers layouts of deluxe flats 20A and 20B in Tower 6 of Sun Hung Kai Properties development The Leighton Hill in Happy Valley

2002  Elected as Jockey Club steward

2002-03  Negotiates SHKP consultancy contract. Honour Finance loan of HK$900,000 still outstanding

February 2003  Submits resignation to MPFA and moves into both flats without making any rental agreement

August 2003  Leaves MPFA

October 2003  Accepts cash cheque of HK$3 million from SHKP’s Thomas Kwok

March 2004  Becomes SHKP consultant. Turns down position of financial minister again

2004  Joins KMB board of directors. Part of Hong Kong’s National Day delegation to Beijing

March-April 2005  Accepts cash cheque of HK$5 million from Kwok. Receives unsecured Honour Finance loan of HK$3 million

April 2005  Resigns from SHKP. Becomes chief strategist in Donald Tsang Yam-kuen’s chief executive campaign. Receives HK$4.125 million from SHKP for remainder of contract between April 2005 and February 2006. SHKP arranges lease contract for Hui to continue living at Leighton Hill at HK$160,000 per month.

May-June 2005  SHKP executive director Thomas Chan Kui-yuen gives Hui’s friend Francis Kwan Hung-sang HK$10.5 million, HK$8.5 million of which Kwan transfers to Hui in separate transactions while keeping HK$2 million. Hui also takes HK$3 million from former nightclub owner Law Cheuk

June 30, 2005  Appointed chief secretary. Oversees government projects of Ma Wan and West Kowloon Cultural District, both involving SHKP

July 2007  Steps down as chief secretary while staying on at Executive Council as non-official member

2007  Chan gives Kwan, via overseas companies, HK$11.182 million. Kwan keeps about HK$1 million and passes the rest to Hui

January 2009  Hui quits Exco

March 2012  Hui and others arrested by ICAC. Charged in July

November 2013  Declared bankrupt in High Court

Trial timeline

May 8, 2014  Five defendants in the most high-profile graft case in Hong Kong’s history deny all bribery allegations as the hearing starts. The five include former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan, Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairmen brothers Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong and Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, SHKP executive director Thomas Chan Kui-yuen and former stock exchange senior executive Francis Kwan Hung-sang, who is a childhood friend of Hui. Hui is accused of receiving HK$34 million in cash, loans and other inducements between 2000 and 2009 from Kwok’s brothers via money transfer between Thomas Chan and Kwan.

May 28  Mr Justice Andrew Macrae discharges jury barely an hour into the hearing due to the exit of a juror who  prompted by the exit of a juror who complains of illness. A second jury, including six women and three men, is empanelled on June 4, 2014. The jury is selected from more than 150 candidates. Many offer various excuses to avoid the duty, for reasons including poor health, planning a funeral, caring for a newborn, a wedding and honeymoon and attending the soccer World Cup in Brazil. Several say they have planned trips to South Korea, including one woman going there to meet “a handsome man” who acted in the science fiction series My Love from the Star. Macrae jokes: “It looks like the court will have to move to Korea.”

June 5  Lead prosecutor David Perry QC begins his opening remarks, which last for four days. The speech unveiled In them, he reveals the allegation of how the Kwok brothers paid millions of dollars to Hui, via complicated fund transfers between Chan and Kwan, to act as their “inside man” and as “eyes and ears” in the government for the developer SHKP. It also unveiled reveals that Hui lived an “extravagant” and “lavish” lifestyle that costs him up to 10 times his income.

June 12  First witness, Exco clerk Kinnie Wong Kit-yee talks about the importance of Exco members declaring their interests. From this time until September 5, more than 50 witness are called by the prosecutor to give evidence.

June 26  Raymond Chin Yuet-ming, Hui’s long-time friend, describes how he helped Hui transfer HK$3 million to women in Shanghai and Shenzhen between 2009 and 2010. He says he did not question Hui’s motive because he believed Hui would never engage in illegal activities.

July 23  The court hears that Hui’s wife discussed with a Sun Hung Kai Properties representative in 2001 how to fit out two luxury Happy Valley flats in The Leighton Hill development, built by the property giant. That allegedly happened when Hui was still a public servant to act as managing director of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority from June 2000 to August 2003. In February 2003, before he left the government, Hui moved in with his wife at The Leighton Hill without paying rent, which the prosecutor alleges to be part of a bribe to Hui.

August 15  The court hears that a man named Law Cheuk was the mystery person who gave Hui HK$3 million to pay rent on his Happy Valley flats just before he became chief secretary in mid-2005.

August 18  The court hears that Raymond Kwok denied in 2012 that he knew of any illegal payment or bribe to former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan. Prosecutors read out Kwok’s denial, in the form of a statement from his lawyer submitted to the director of public prosecutions when the ICAC arrested Kwok in March 2012. In it, Kwok told graft-busters that a sum of HK$4.125 million given to Hui as he was leaving SHKP’s employ as a consultant in 2005 was a special bonus the latter asked for. He said an SHKP executive had wrongly described the bonus as advance payment of Hui’s consultancy fees from April 2005 to February 2006, a “minor mistake” he said had “given a wrong impression that SHKP continued to pay Hui after he left the group”.

August 21  Perry cites bank documents to show how Hui’s debt shot up from HK$4 million to HK$57 million in a two-year period after he stepped down as chief secretary in 2007, with a taste for keeping horses, five-star hotel meals, trips abroad and nights out at opera – an expensive lifestyle that made him “an obvious target for exploitation”.

September 12-30  Hui’s defence testimony begins. He describes himself as a man who would “spend everything” in his pocket and pay only the minimum charges on his credit card bills. The music lover admits he spent HK$200,000 on records in a single day in 2007.

Highlights of Rafael Hui defence -

15 September  Hui, who has been married since 1974, says he lavished millions on a young Shanghai woman after he and she started an “intimate” relationship in 2008, a liaison that lasted for two to three years.

19 September  Hui admits he had evaded taxes on income totalling HK$21.8 million, earned from Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong of Sun Hung Kai Properties, in the years before and during his term as chief secretary.

23 September  Hui reveals he received a secret HK$11 million payment “from Beijing” amid offers of help from top mainland official Liao Hui.

3 October to 16 October   Thomas Kwok’s testimony begins. On his first day testifying he describes how he negotiated the release of his elder brother Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, who had been kidnapped in 1997 by the notorious gangster “Big Spender” Cheung Tsz-keung. Thomas Kwok says after his brother’s release Walter Kwok became paranoid, and disappointed his mother by keeping a mistress. Thomas Kwok says that in 2007, Walter Kwok was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that Thomas Kwok has since had a bad relationship with his brother.

20 October  The 100th day of the trial. SHKP executive director Thomas Chan, testifying in his own defence, says that Raymond Kwok wrote in his diary in 2001 that Walter Kwok had “gone crazy”. The trail was originally scheduled to be 70 days to run until October.

19 December  Verdicts delivered. Hui is found guilty of five counts of misconduct in public office and bribery.