The ICAC did not want even its own lawyer or the courts to see an agreement that could prove a woman's consent to enter the witness protection programme because it had not yet signed it, as required by law, the District Court heard yesterday.
Graham Harris, counsel for solicitor Andrew Lam Ping-cheung, said the Independent Commission Against Corruption's production of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) - signed by witness Becky Wong Pui-see on July 13, 2004 - would have brought an end to the habeas corpus proceedings launched by barrister Kevin Egan on her behalf.
Instead, Mr Harris said the anti-graft body had refused the requests of at least one High Court judge, and also Bernard Ryan, then senior assistant director of public prosecutions representing the ICAC in the case, and Egan to produce the document in court on July 15 and 16, 2004.
'The ICAC did not want anyone to see this MOU because they knew at that time the approving authority [the ICAC itself] had not signed it,' Mr Harris said. The commission did not sign the document until July 16, earlier evidence revealed.
But principal ICAC investigator Ricky Chu Man-kin testified yesterday that the MOU was a top-secret document that could not be divulged to anyone under any circumstances.
Egan, 58, Lam, 53, Semtech International Holdings chairman Derek Wong Chong-kwong, 37, and his lover Mandy Chui Man-si, 25, stand accused of launching a campaign to press the ICAC into releasing Semtech secretary Becky Wong, a potential witness against Derek Wong in an alleged corruption case.