In characteristic ICAC style, it all began suddenly, at the crack of dawn. Two prominent criminal lawyers, the chairman of a publicly listed company, a solicitor's clerk and two others were arrested. Dozens of journalists were taken in for questioning after raids on seven newspaper offices - including the South China Morning Post - and a journalist's home.
So began a saga that dominated the front pages of newspapers long after the suspects were released. A tearful press conference and a rare emergency meeting of the watchdog Independent Commission Against Corruption Operations Review Committee ensued. Anger at the raids spiralled into calls for the anti-corruption body's 'draconian' and 'sweeping' powers to be curtailed. Calls emerged for a human rights commission to monitor the potent body.
Conspiracy theories abounded about the ICAC's motive in conducting the investigation. Andrew Lam Ping-cheung, the solicitor who was arrested and later released on a non-prejudicial basis, a former ICAC officer himself, said at an emotional press conference that the body had a vendetta against him. Barrister Kevin Egan told how he had made a tongue-in-cheek comment as he was being arrested that: 'This is payback time for all the grief I have caused you in the past.'
Media groups, lawmakers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) expressed outrage at what they termed an unnecessary foray into the fundamental freedom of the press by the law enforcement agency. International concern also poured in from places like the American State Department and the US Consulate in Hong Kong, as well as global NGOs like the International Federation of Journalists.
The Hong Kong Journalists' Association chairwoman Cheung Ping-ling perhaps summed up the sentiment well enough on the day of the raids when she said: 'If they wanted information, they could have just called the newspapers and asked.'
But the ICAC had instead gone the route of obtaining warrants for the search and seizure of journalistic materials, using a power it had exercised only three times in the nine years that the legislation had been in force.
The ICAC continued to insist a crime had been committed and it was well within its rights to investigate. Head of operations Daniel Li Ming-chak told the Post in an interview at the height of the outrage that: 'Each case is judged on its merits. Certainly in a similar case, we would go down the same [legal] path if a warrant was justified. There could be other options.' A balance had been struck between its prerogative to investigate crimes and the freedom of the press, he said. A majority of the Operations Review Committee vindicated the body, with one member reserving her views.