Hong Kong’s Kwok brothers caught up in Australian detention centre scandal
The ‘Panama Papers’ reveal that the Kwoks were behind the security firm running controversial offshore processing camps
Hong Kong’s billionaire Kwok brothers are in the spotlight again after leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm revealed they were behind the security firm running Australia’s controversial offshore refugee processing camps.
The “Panama Papers”, which are causing a global sensation by revealing how the world’s rich and powerful are hiding their wealth in tax havens, have piled pressure on the Canberra government to terminate its contracts with Australian company Wilson Security, which has earned about half a billion Australian dollars from them.
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The two brothers of Sun Hung Kai Properties were charged with bribing Hong Kong’s former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan in 2012, but covertly remained in control of Wilson Security through Wilson Offshore Group Holdings in the British Virgin Islands, according to ABC News, which was part of the consortium of investigative journalists that studied the leaked documents.
Two weeks after the brothers were charged in 2012, both of them removed themselves as directors from the BVI firm, only to replace themselves with two mysterious new directors that were companies, Winsome Sky and Harmony Core.
The leaked files show the directors of those mystery companies were in fact the Kwok brothers themselves.
The BVI company controlled the Wilson Group that covered Wilson Security.
Six months before Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong was convicted and Raymond Kwok Ping-luen acquitted in December 2014, Wilson Security was engaged in a tender process for a defence contract, ABC reported.