Rogerio Lam Sou-fung, once one of Hong Kong's highest profile investors, was jailed yesterday for 20 months and barred from being a director of any company for five years after being convicted of a multi-billion dollar bank fraud.
In handing down the sentence, District Court Judge Bernard Whaley refused to spare Lam, 66, from jail despite his ailing health.
The judge said Hong Kong's prisons offered 'high-quality treatment'.
The son of the late Hang Seng Bank founder Lam Bing-yim, Lam was found guilty of two counts of using a copy of a false instrument, which he had denied.
He was convicted on Friday of trying to use a bogus bank guarantee with a face value of US$600 million (HK$4.68 billion) in two failed attempts to obtain a loan of US$200 million from Credit Lyonnais Bank and Deutsche Bank in June 2000.
Lam was one of the most watched-after investors in the 1970s and early 1980s.