A banker has escaped extra jail time after the Government failed to persuade an appeal court that three years for fraud was 'manifestly inadequate' and would send the wrong signal to white-collar criminals.
Peter Chan Shiu-wing lured high-profile executives from Golden Harvest to invest with an arm of the Credit Suisse Group by offering bogus interest rates on fixed-term deposits and loans.
The rogue banker was convicted by a jury of false accounting, using bogus instruments and making fraudulent bank entries.
He was jailed in December for three years. However, the Secretary for Justice yesterday launched an attack on the sentence.
'Three years is manifestly inadequate,' senior government counsel Kevin Zervos argued. 'This was a serious course of offending by a banker in a position of trust.' Chan faced a maximum penalty of 14 years after he duped Golden Harvest director Peter Choy Tuk-sang into depositing US$26.2 million with Swiss Volksbank - which was taken over by Credit Suisse - in late 1996. In all, US$43 million was illicitly transacted by Chan. Using Mr Choy's US$26.2 million as security, a further US$17.62 million was borrowed and re-deposited at the high rate of interest - a staggering 15 per cent - being offered by Chan.
Golden Harvest chairman Raymond Chow Ting-hsing moreover took out a US$2 million loan with the bank shortly after.
