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Toh Han Shih

The founding chairman of Moulin Global Eyecare Holdings and two other defendants have been found guilty in a fraud case involving the company that once boasted of being one of world's largest eyewear manufacturers.
 The jury yesterday found Moulin-chairman Ma Bo-kee along with Lam Chun-wai and Or Tak-yim  guilty of charges related to the creation of false documents, inflated sales and the misleading of auditors and banks.
 Three other defendants, including Cary Ma Lit-kin, a son of Ma Bo-kee  and former Moulin chief executive, had earlier pleaded guilty to all charges against them.
Of the 10 defendants in the trial the jury found three other defendants not guilty of all charges in the Court of First Instance yesterday. 
The jury failed to reach a verdict on a charge against Tang Yiu-leung, former Moulin financial controller. He was found not guilty on two other charges.
 The defendants will be sentenced on December 1. Under Hong Kong law, the maximum jail sentence for commercial crime is 14 years. 
The jury took three days to reach its verdict, one of the longest jury deliberations in Hong Kong's history. Mr Justice Peter Line  said the length of the deliberation was not surprising, given the large numbers of defendants and charges, as well as the complexity of the case. 
The bankrupt company once described itself as the world's third-largest eyewear manufacturer, but both the prosecution and defence agree that the firm, formerly Hong Kong listed, inflated its 2003 revenue by HK$337.6 million to HK$1.24 billion through fake sales to non-existent North American customers. 
Ma Bo-kee founded the firm in 1960 as a sole proprietorship.
 It went into provisional liquidation in 2005, owing over HK$5 billion. The company was liquidated in 2006 and delisted in 2007.
Ma Bo-kee was found guilty  of conspiring to inflate his company's published 2003 revenue, conspiring to create false invoices and shipping documents in 2005 and conspiring to make false representations to get Moulin's then auditor, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu,  to sign off on Moulin's 2004 annual report.
Cary Ma pleaded guilty to the three charges of which father was also found guilty. 
One other charge to which he pleaded guilty involved conspiring to defraud 18 banks, including HSBC, by falsifying invoices to obtain bank credit facilities between March 2004 and May 2005.  The court had earlier heard that former-Moulin-employees Chan Po-ming  and Lam Chun-wai  had created false invoices and import documents. 
The jury found Chan not guilty.  
Yu Kwok-leung  and Cheung Wing-wah,  who were associates of Moulin, were found not guilty of money laundering charges. Chan Po-ming,  a female former employee of Moulin, was found not guilty of conspiracy to make false instruments and conspiracy to defraud.
Michelle Lam Yuk-wah, a former senior Moulin female employee, and Wong Ka-ho, an associate of Moulin, pleaded guilty to all charges.
Ghost clients
Moulin faked sales to non-existent North American customers
The bankrupt company, formerly Hong Kong listed, inflated its 2003 revenue by, in HK dollars, $337.6m



Eyewear boss, staff guilty in fraud trial