Rafael Hui graft scandal highlights need for more government accountability in its dealings

The sensational corruption trial of former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan may be wrapping up, but it leaves in its wake the troubling question of uncomfortably close ties between government and business.

Critics have described such relationships as “collusion”. In the immediate aftermath of Hui’s arrest in 2012, government administrators defended the system, insisting enough checks were in place to prevent any financial or ethical conflict of interest.

They have been conspicuously silent since then, presumably because Hui and four other men have been charged. But the stunning revelations in court of his extravagant lifestyle, funded on long-term extended credit and bribes from one of two Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairmen, suggest silence may no longer be tenable.

Observers say the case makes it painfully plain that the system is in need of an overhaul. Either that, or there is a patent lack of enforcement of existing rules, for which the question of accountability must also be answered.

Hui took out a HK$3 million loan a year before he became chief secretary and political star in chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen’s first cabinet in 2005. Nearly a decade later, not a cent of the principal sum has been repaid to Honour Finance, a subsidiary of SHKP. This alone reflects government’s laxity at tracking officials’ liabilities – or at least demanding their disclosure.

The HK$19 million in illicit payments Hui took from key people in SHKP, meanwhile, were routed through his personal and company bank accounts shortly before he rose to the No 2 position and during his tenure as a non-official member of the Executive Council.

The graft convictions of Hui and Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong, formerly of SHKP, also come as the public and press await further word from the Independent Commission Against Corruption on its checks into Hui’s old boss Tsang and his successor, the incumbent Leung Chun-ying.