‘Treasure what you have now,’ tycoon Thomas Kwok declares after Hong Kong court releases him on bail ahead of appeal
‘Treasure what you have,’ says SHKP billionaire turned theology student
Jailed property tycoon Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong was freed on bail on Tuesday as the city’s top court allowed him and three accomplices to appeal against their convictions for corruption, but sent the others back to prison.
While his newfound freedom may be temporary, a celebratory mood took over outside court as the 65-year-old former co-chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) hugged his son Adam twice, saying he was “excited” and reminding everyone to “treasure what you have”.
“When you have lost something, then you know how precious life is,” he said. The first thing he would do was dine with his aged mother, Kwok said.
While allowing all four to seek an appeal, the Court of Final Appeal struck out all but one of their grounds for a new hearing, agreeing only to hear arguments on whether the former chief secretary’s “favourable disposition” to the property giant was a strong enough criminal element by bribery law standards.
Kwok’s five-year term was the shortest out of the four handed down in 2014, when he was convicted of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office. Factoring in good behaviour, he would have left prison just a month after the scheduled hearing date on May 9 next year, prompting the court to grant him bail but not the others.
The white-haired tycoon, who became a theology student behind bars, refused to say if he would visit Hui. During the trial he denied that the disgraced former official was a good friend.
Jailed for 7½ years, Hui did not ask for bail. His physical condition appeared to have worsened over the past two years. When he left the prison van, he needed the support of several officers.
The two others jailed in the same case, former SHKP executive Thomas Chan Kui-yuen and former stock exchange official Francis Kwan Hung-sang, were denied bail. Thomas Kwok’s younger brother, Raymond Kwok Ping-luen was exonerated in the original trial.
The three-judge panel narrowed down the crux of the final fight to whether the prosecution’s case that Hui’s “being or remaining favourably disposed” to SHKP sufficiently constituted misconduct in public office.
The panel, led by Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, struck out a key defence argument on the “unfairness” of the jury having convicted Chan and Kwan for bribing Hui, while acquitting the Kwok brothers on the same count.
Prosecutor David Perry QC told the court it was “never ever suggested” that the verdict for Chan and Kwan should mirror that of the Kwoks. The independently considered verdicts, he stressed, showed “the jury system in Hong Kong is working properly, not deficiently”.
Edwin Choy Wai-bond, for the former chief secretary, repeated his argument that investigators from the Independent Commission Against Corruption had erred by not cautioning his client when questioning him in 2009.
But the chief justice dismissed that, saying this could not show the two lower courts were “badly wrong”.
Additional reporting by Eddie Lee and Fred Lai
