He transferred assets to avoid paying damages for fatal collapse 12 years ago
The director of a property management company who transferred assets worth HK$37.6 million to evade paying damages for the fatal collapse of a canopy in Aberdeen 12 years ago was jailed for 10 months yesterday.
Potter Pang, 58, was sentenced in the District Court on charges of fraud as an officer of a company that had gone into liquidation and making a false declaration, to which he had pleaded not guilty.
Deputy District Judge Henry Mierczak said Pang had 'deliberately created a sham' to defraud his creditors and that such transfers were made so that 'no one would get anything'.
Pang's Housing Management Agency was found jointly liable for the accident in which a 76-year-old newspaper vendor died and eight people were injured when a 15-tonne concrete canopy gave way under the weight of an illegally installed restaurant fish tank at Albert House along Sai On Street on August 1, 1994.
The court heard that Pang had sold four properties owned by the agency for HK$1 to shell companies he controlled so that he could avoid having to pay HK$9.9 million in personal damages.
He was also found guilty of making a false declaration claiming that the transactions were made to reorganise the group of shell companies, and thus avoiding stamp duty between April and May 2001.