‘A sense of foreboding’: Lew Mon-hung, former CY Leung ally, testifies that senior media figures warned him about Hong Kong chief executive before arrest
The controversial businessman’s revelations came to light on the second day of his court testimony for interfering in a high-level fraud case
Controversial businessman Lew Mon-hung received two calls from senior figures from the media, warning him about Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying days prior to his arrest, a court heard yesterday.
Coming to his own defence at the District Court for the second straight day, Lew said the first call came from an assistant editor at Wen Wei Po on January 2 in 2013, six days before his arrest.
The editor told him that Leung refused to go to a karaoke party over Christmas in 2012, unlike the year before, after he learned that Lew would be attending it.
READ MORE: ‘CY Leung framed me’: Hong Kong businessman Lew Mon-hung tells the District Court he was fitted up after chief executive failed to keep his end of a deal
“Lew criticised me unreservedly,” said Lew in recalling what the editor claimed Leung told him. Lew earlier pleaded not guilty to one count of perverting the course of justice in 2013.
Days after the call, on January 6 in 2013, the then deputy editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal rang him and said Leung would make his life difficult because he did not like his criticisms, Lew said.
This also followed a string of criticisms published in newspapers and broadcast on television, ranging from Lew’s criticisms on Leung and his cabinet for a lack of political wisdom to Leung’s failure to implement the then controversial national education proposal.
The prosecutors alleged that Lew was accused of sending Leung and Simon Peh Yun-lu, ICAC commissioner, letters and emails to stop an ICAC investigation of Lew, in relation to a fraud case. He was acquitted by the High Court last year.
Lew yesterday said that he did not intend to halt the ICAC investigation by sending his letter.