The Allied Group investigation broke the mould: dawn raids on rich and influential people, hyper-vigilant regulators and a seemingly bottomless budget to stamp out corporate crime.
It was the early 1990s and Hong Kong was a city in its last days as a cowboy town. The case was a warning shot.
But Mr Justice Pang Kin-kee's ruling yesterday meant that the whole drama, all the money and man hours, had been for nothing. The judge ordered a permanent halt to the Court of First Instance case which accused former group chairman Lee Ming Tee, 59, and ex-finance director Ronald Tse Chu-fai, 48, of a fraud conspiracy concerning the placing of millions of shares in the early 1990s.
The spectacular collapse of the seven-year saga is not only a major blow to regulators, but adds to a number of recent costly disappointments on the commercial crime front.
It also puts an already complex and cumbersome process of investigation under intense pressure: any subsequent financial probe on a similar scale will have to take the concept of watertight to new heights. The question on many lips now is whether the Government will in future fear taxpayers' wrath so much that it will not allow prosecutors to enter a courtroom with anything but a 100 per cent winnable corporate crime case.
Former financial secretary Hamish Macleod's appointment of independent inspector Nicholas Allen to probe alleged financial manoeuvring by Mr Lee triggered a veritable circus.