A top Singaporean lawyer has admitted stealing items worth HK$9,500 from a hotel room in Hong Kong while in a weakened state of mind because of his untreated depression, a court heard yesterday.
Choy Chee Yean, a 40-year-old arbitration lawyer, is a partner at Rajah and Tann - one of Singapore's biggest law firms - earning S$700,000 (HK$4 million) a year.
Before District Court Judge Patrick Li Hon-leung, he pleaded guilty to one charge of burglary.
Prosecutor Robert Lee Kan-yung said a security camera at the Novotel Citygate hotel in Tung Chung twice filmed Choy on the night of January 17. It caught him standing at the door of a room where he had stolen a set of Bluetooth earphones, a mobile phone, a charger, a personal digital assistant and an iPod Nano.
Police recovered all the stolen items, worth about HK$9,500 in total, from Choy's hotel room a few hours later, Mr Lee said.
Defence barrister Andrew Bruce SC told the court that Choy had entered a room through a half-open door. The theft was extraordinary, he said, since Choy took items from different places in the room - including inside the pocket of an overcoat - but did not take a laptop computer.
'A very valuable and obvious item had not been taken - the laptop computer. It's not small, and you could not have missed it,' said Mr Bruce, stressing that the lawyer did not need any of the items he took.