A teacher-turned-barrister has been accused of lying about his employment details and forging his application for unpaid leave to attend a law course, the District Court heard yesterday. Larry Yeung Hon-keung, 40, allegedly passed himself off as a hotel's legal manager in his application to join a part-time, two-year postgraduate certificate law course at the University of Hong Kong, from which he graduated in September 2002. In fact, Yeung was a full-time teacher at the Sir Ellis Kadoorie Secondary School in West Kowloon and an assistant education officer at the Education Department before and during his part-time study, the court heard. When he could not cope with both his teaching duties and the course's heavy workload, Yeung applied to the department for nine months' unpaid leave, which he took between September 2001 and June 2002, prosecutor William Tam said. Yeung claimed he needed the leave to attend a part-time postgraduate certificate in laws, or PCLL, course in education at the University of Hong Kong. As a result, the department incurred expenses hiring a substitute teacher to fill in for Yeung while he continued to receive his remuneration as an assistant education officer. Yeung was formally admitted as a barrister on November 30, 2002, and resigned from the Education Department on June 25, 2004. He is also no longer a full-time teacher at Sir Ellis Kadoorie. Yeung denied five charges of forgery, fraud and using false instruments allegedly committed between February 2000 and July 2002. The HKU's part-time law course required students to obtain employers' approval to release them to attend four half-day lectures or tutorials each week. If students are civil servants, they are obliged to disclose their civil-service experience, which the defendant allegedly omitted to do in the application he filed in May 2000. Instead, he allegedly forged a letter claiming he was employed as a legal manager at Tai Po Hotel, which was run by his sister, for eight years. The letter also confirmed he would be released from work to attend the classes. Over the two-year course, he repeatedly forged letters sent to the university to apply for rearranging his tutorial classes to avoid clashes with his training at the Tai Po Hotel or to apply for the course fee to be waived by half. The case continues today before Deputy District Judge David Ian Thomas.
