Drug dealer gets life sentence for plotting 'barbaric' acid murder

A drug dealer was imprisoned for life by an Australian court yesterday for the murder of a Hong Kong-born accountant who died an agonising death after a horrific acid attack.

Yonky Irvin Tan ordered acid to be poured down the throat of Dominic Li, 45, so that he would end up permanently disfigured and looking 'like a pig'. Li died of horrific internal injuries three weeks after he was held at gunpoint and forced to swallow the acid in front of his wife and 14-year-old son at their home in Sydney in 2002.

Li was the innocent victim of a plot by Tan and associates to intimidate his brother-in-law, who they accused of losing A$500,000 (HK$3.3 million) in a money laundering operation that went wrong.

Tan is already serving 24 years in prison for dealing in the party drug Ecstasy. He was found guilty in December of murdering Li, who was born in Hong Kong, but emigrated to Australia in 1983, becoming a partner in a respected Sydney accountancy firm.

A New South Wales Supreme Court judge ordered Tan, 42, from the Central Coast north of Sydney, to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Li was attacked after his wife opened their door to two strangers one afternoon in December 2002, saying they had come to deliver a parcel. One of the men pointed a pistol at his wife's head, while the other ordered Li to get down on his knees.

The accountant, who had never been in trouble with the police, was kicked and pistol-whipped.