His lawyers claim he inherited a pay system used since 1997
The former head of RTHK's classical music channel, Radio 4, yesterday filed an appeal to clear his name after he was convicted of inflating the salaries of two employees by falsifying freelance payments to their relatives.
On October 16 last year, Richard Tsang Yip-fat, 51, was found guilty of two counts of misconduct in a public office between March 1999 and December 2000.
He was given a four-month suspended jail sentence.
In finding Tsang guilty, Magistrate Albert Wong Sung-hau accepted he was a man of integrity but dismissed his pleas that he was following a long-standing practice at RTHK.
After the hearing, an RTHK spokesperson said there was no such thing as a 'long-standing practice' of processing freelance payments to cover employees' extra pay, and that the two examples in the trial were 'rare cases'.
But yesterday, the counsel representing Tsang, Gerard McCoy SC, told Mr Justice Thomas Gall at the Court of First Instance that his client had 'inherited' the payment system, which was also used by senior managers at RTHK.
