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SCMP Reporter

ABOUT 9 am on June 16 the gates of Stanley Prison will swing open and a familiar, if slightly gaunt, figure will appear.

  Billionaire Ronald Li Fook-shiu is about to become a free man. Two years and eight months after being sent to jail for corruption, the former chairman of the Stock Exchange of Hongkong is preparing to start a new life.

  Within minutes of his release he will be whisked away in a limousine to his luxury Shouson Hill home. There, he will sit down with his family and consider his future.

  The humiliating odyssey that took him from the pinnacle of Hongkong society to the degradation of a prison cell is over. Now, equipped with a Tongan passport, vast wealth and a wife who has stood by him, a new journey is about to begin.

  It will be, by all accounts, a very different one.

  People close to him say he is a changed man, no longer the domineering, greedy power broker who built the stock exchange into one of the great bourses of the world. Prison has changed him.

  Li, now 63, is a man at peace with himself, who wants to forget the past and start a new life. Remarkably, they say, he is not bitter.

  But there is one memory he will not be able to cope with - Hongkong. The stares, the averted eyes, the turned backs, the pointed fingers. It will all be too much. Li, one of the territory's richest men and certainly the most prominent figure to be tried here, will not be able to look Hongkong in the face.

  Sources close to the family reveal Li has plans to start a new life in Canada, remaining in Hongkong will be ''too humiliating'' and the sources have strongly suggested Li and his wife will leave for Toronto.

  It is understood the family has significant property holdings in Vancouver and Toronto.

  ''I have heard he is prepared to retire to Canada,'' said one source.

  ''I think he has had the idea of leaving for Canada since he went to jail. The sentence was not exactly good for his ego.''   Reliable accounts suggest life behind bars has not been too harsh, even for a man used to wining and dining at the territory's top nightclubs, hotels and restaurants.

  Ironically, his Tongan passport - acquired with a minimum investment of US$23,000 (HK$178,000) in the Pacific island nation - has guaranteed him a Western meal in jail through his status as an overseas passport holder.

    An inmate who knew him described Li, who spent time working in the prison library, as a ''nice person who seemed resigned to his fate''.

  They took walks together in the prison garden during exercise time. Li is a category-B prisoner, meaning his sentence is less than 10 years.

  ''He spoke in French quite often as he said he wanted to practise,'' the fellow inmate said.

  ''He was an extremely intelligent man. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he speaks and he was very, very sharp.

  ''Ronald used to reminisce about the past, about his travels. He wasn't considered a terribly friendly man. He didn't associate too much with the other prisoners.

  ''He was placed with other white-collar criminals and not with murderers. He was a bit of a cause celebre.

  ''He seemed resigned to what was going on. There comes a time when you have to accept what has happened, I think he knew he had no choice.''   Stanley is the highest-security prison, usually for repeat offenders and white-collar criminals; all 1,800 inmates have their own cells.

  During the lonely nights in his prison cell, he must have cast his mind back many times to the good old days when he ran the stockmarket as his personal fiefdom. He was known as ''the headmaster''. His word was law.

    ''If you wanted to change the carpet, you asked Ronald,'' said one colleague at the time.

  Who can forget the day he dared to attempt to float Club Volvo (now Club Bboss), the glitzy hostess club he had a financial interest in. And then there was the stock exchange newsletter that used to run sycophantic articles about Li's personal life.

  This man, regarded by many as a financial genius who unified the four Hongkong markets into one in 1986, has also been described as someone who had a ''preference for strong personal leadership over formal rules and procedures''.

  There was no better example of this than the stockmarket crash of 1987, when Li played a major role in closing the Hongkong exchange for four days as world markets crashed.

  At the ''Black Monday'' press conference held to justify the controversial move, Li demanded the expulsion of a journalist who dared to ask about the legality of closing the exchange.

  The image of Li, accusatory finger outstretched, his face contorted with rage, flashed around the world and left Hongkong's already suspect reputation as a world financial centre in shreds.

  It was the beginning of the end for Li, who studied at the University of Hongkong and in the US before returning in 1969 to start a stockbroking firm and set up his own stockmarket, the Far Eastern Exchange.

  Suddenly his methods of doing business were regarded as suspect and started attracting attention from the authorities.

  On January 2, 1988, Li's life was changed forever. He was awoken by a dawn raid by the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

  He fought the charges to the end but, on October 17, 1990, after a six-week trial, he was convicted on two charges of accepting rewards for supporting the listing of two companies on the stockmarket.

  It was a verdict regarded as a watershed in Hongkong's commercial affairs as many observers saw the four-year sentence as going a long way to restoring the integrity of the exchange.

  Mr Justice Bokhary told Li: ''You are a very wealthy man by any standards, and have long been a wealthy man, so you have even less excuse than a poor man for what you did.''   Li, the 13th child of a fifth generation Hongkong family, was finished.

  His defence lawyer, Mr John Lloyd-Eley, QC, said in mitigation at the sentencing the next day: ''Disgrace has brought misery not only to himself but to all members of his family, including his sons who are prominent citizens in this territory.''    Related charges against one son, Alfred, a lawyer, were later dropped. Another son, Lawrence, is an ear, nose and throat specialist.

  ''This has all been very hard on the family and very stressful for them,'' a family friend said.

  ''They are all extremely low profile and don't want to talk about the whole thing again.

  ''I consider them a nice, normal family that have had a rough time.

  ''They want to forget about all this and put it behind them and start a new life.''  Even in the darkest days, Li had supporters who felt he was the fall guy for an angry establishment looking for someone to blame for all Hongkong's regulatory inadequacies.

  Having to face a prison sentence must have been an unbearable thought for Li, a proud, dictatorial man who always got his own way.

  A close acquaintance at the time put it this way: ''For the first time in his life someone will be telling him what to do, from when he must take a shower to when he will take meals. It must be worse than purgatory.''   The debt paid, at least Li is returning to the outside world in good shape.

  ''Ronald is in excellent health,'' said a family source.

  ''He has always been in good health. I don't think his time in jail has affected him physically.''  His wife, Irene, will be there to help the emotional scars heal. Throughout the ordeal she has refused to hide.

  ''Ronald and his wife are a very good couple, a very good husband and wife,'' the source said.

  ''The fact that Ronald is in disgrace does not mean she has gone into hiding herself. She still socialises.

  ''I suppose one has to be brave and strong, or at least make it look as if one were brave and strong.''  Her long wait will soon be over. On June 16, Li will rise early, shower, eat breakfast and change into clothes worthy of a former chairman of the stock exchange.

  Then he will head for the gate and the freedom that lies beyond. Outside his family and friends and that vast fortune awaits him.



Ronald Li's road to freedom