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Professor Chow Shew-ping, an HKU pro-vice-chancellor in 2013 in charge of fundraising and one of the six who handled the money, yesterday rejected the criticism. Photo: May Tse

Probe of donations to Hong Kong university 'unfair', scholars say

Participating academics point to faults with inquiry into donations handled by Benny Tai

Scholars who took part in the University of Hong Kong's investigation of the handling of HK$1.45 million in donations say some of their responses to the inquiry panel have been omitted from the final report.

Casting doubt on the report's credibility, five out of the six academics also complained of being given only extracts of the report when they were sought for comments again.

They signalled their disapproval of the investigation in their ensuing comments. Those responses were made public on the university's website on Tuesday along with the final report and an accompanying "letter of elaboration", which concluded most of the parties involved "fell short of expected standards" in handling the funds.

Professor Chow Shew-ping, an HKU pro-vice-chancellor in 2013 in charge of fundraising and one of the six who handled the money, yesterday rejected the criticism.

"The reason for my decision was explained in detail in … my earlier reply to the audit committee. Unfortunately, the report quoted only part of it and omitted a few very important sentences," Chow said, without elaborating.

In December, HKU asked its audit committee to examine legal scholar and Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting's acceptance and use over two years of HK$1.45 million, which was partly channelled to Occupy-related projects.

On Tuesday, HKU's governing council voted 11-6 to accept both the report and the letter and to refer them to senior management to decide whether to take disciplinary action.

Some council members had argued in vain for separate voting on the report and the letter.

One of the six, former law dean and pro-democracy scholar Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun, also complained about unfair procedures.

Chan said he received only isolated passages and sentences from the report to comment on, and that his request for the full version was refused. "One would have expected the council to decide on the merits of each case separately. Yet the council simply adopted an en bloc decision [to accept the report], which suggests it has failed to consider the responses at all," he said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Scholars decry 'unfair' HKU probe
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