Hong Kong racing has suffered two major race-fixing scandals: OCTOBER 1999 Champion apprentice Stanley Chin, 25, is convicted of two charges of conspiracy to cheat at gambling and decried as 'the root of the evil' by the judge, who hands him a 3.5-year jail sentence. Chin had accepted $1 million from a mainland businessman and used it to bribe 11 fellow apprentice jockeys not to finish in the top three in a Sha Tin race in 1996. Six apprentice jockeys had been charged with corruption offences and three were convicted. Ricky Choi Chun-wai, 27, was jailed for a year for deliberately obstructing a race by riding his horse irregularly as an apprentice jockey. Choi accepted a $150,000 bribe to avoid finishing in the top three. Apprentice Keith Kwok Ting, 24, was jailed for six months for taking $180,000 in bribes for the same incident. The convictions were the culmination of an Independent Commission Against Corruption dragnet, codenamed Operation Fine Horse, that saw 11 current and former jockeys among 13 people arrested in raids targeting a $2 million race-fixing racket. The scam involved two Sha Tin races, on March 30, 1996, and April 14, 1996. APRIL 8, 1986 Hong Kong racing is rocked by its biggest race-fixing scandal, known as the Shanghai Syndicate case, orchestrated by textiles tycoon Yang Yuan-loong. Australian jockey David Brosnan and four local riders were jailed for 18 months for conspiring to cheat the public at gaming. Yang received a two-year suspended sentence and was fined $5.4 million.
