Barrister broke vow on identity of protected witness, court told

Veteran barrister Kevin Egan conveyed to journalists the identity of a woman on the ICAC's Witness Protection Programme on the same day he pledged to a judge he would keep the information confidential, the District Court heard yesterday.

Egan and solicitor Andrew Lam Ping-cheung have been accused of launching a campaign involving the court and press to pressure the Independent Commission Against Corruption into releasing the woman, who was a potential witness against their client.

Martin Wilson QC said in his opening statement yesterday that the barrister told Magdalen Chow Yin-ling, a South China Morning Post reporter, to look up the Witness Protection Ordinance when she asked him the meaning of 'protective custody' in connection with a closed-door hearing on his client's application for a writ of habeas corpus on July 15, 2004.

'[Mr Egan] went so far as to tell her the chapter number. He also mentioned the Criminal Procedure Ordinance,' he said. The barrister had initially told reporters that he could not say anything about the application.

The prosecutor said Egan repeated the same piece of information to journalists who approached him in the afternoon that day. In addition, the barrister identified to them Eric Yang Yan-tak, who had been outside the court all afternoon, as being in charge of the ICAC investigator in charge of the Witness Protection Programme (WPP). He also mentioned to the group about a safe house and change of name and identity, Mr Wilson said.

Earlier that day, the barrister had given an undertaking to Mr Justice David Yam Yee-kwan after the latter ordered that nothing that transpired at the hearing should be revealed outside, particularly to the press, said the prosecutor.

In the hearing, the judge issued a writ of habeas corpus to Becky Wong Pui-see, a secretary of Semtech International Holdings who had been included on the WPP to help with the ICAC's probe into alleged corruption by the listed company's chairman, Derek Wong Chong-kwong. But the order for the writ was later discharged by another High Court judge.