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Simon Parry

She is the daughter of a bankrupt Hong Kong businessman convicted of fraud in one of the city's biggest commercial crime cases. 
He is one of the brightest stars of Formula 1 with a champagne lifestyle and a pop star girlfriend, Pussycat Doll singer Nicole Scherzinger.
The lives of Jodia Ma and Briton Lewis Hamilton seem worlds apart. But for four years, their lives were  intimately entwined. 
And it was Jodia's father Ma  Bo-kee, convicted on Friday and  facing a lengthy jail term, who gave the future world champion one of his first big breaks.
The couple, both now 25, began a romance in 2003. And Ma's  company, Moulin Global Eyecare, stepped in to sponsor Hamilton - then a hard-up rookie driver - in the 2004 Macau Grand Prix.
Hamilton won pole position in qualifying and, although he failed to win the race, the exposure helped put him on the road to stardom.
In his 2008 autobiography My Story, Hamilton acknowledges his debt to the fallen tycoon when he talks of the circumstances behind his November 2004 sponsorship. 
He wrote: 'At the time I was without McLaren. I had to find my own sponsorship money. 
'Jodia said, 'My dad owns this company in Hong Kong and would love to sponsor you.' I told her there was no way I wanted to do that but she went away and sorted it out  anyway.'
The couple met at the Cambridge School of Arts and Sciences where  Jodia was studying event management. Hamilton was catching up on his GCSE exams while trying to establish himself as a racing driver.
A boy from a poor council estate in Britain, Hamilton's humble background was in sharp contrast to that of privately-educated Jodia.
She lived with her family in a  luxury Clearwater Bay home while her father headed one of the world's biggest eyewear companies.
At its peak in 2000, Moulin  employed 5,000 people in three  production plants in China. Ma was photographed with Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen receiving a Hong Kong Award for Industry.
But the marathon court case in Hong Kong's High Court on Friday heard that Moulin, which made glasses for top brands including Benetton and Revlon, was already on its way to a crash when it funded Hamilton in the 2004 race.
Ma, now 66, stood trial accused of commercial fraud in his attempts to prop up the ailing company before its collapse. 
The charges related to the period May 2004 to April 2005 when Moulin allegedly defrauded banks into giving the failing company credit by falsifying invoices, purchase orders and other supporting documents to make it appear the business was a  going concern.
Ma 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.
The trial heard Moulin inflated its 2003 revenue by HK$337.6 million to HK$1.24 billion through fake sales to non-existent clients in America.
But as Ma's troubles deepened, Hamilton's fortunes were rising. 
His Formula 3 career took off as his former sponsor went into provisional liquidation in 2005, owing more than $HK5 billion, and police launched a fraud investigation. 
A year later, as McLaren announced Hamilton's place on its 2007 Formula 1 team, Ma was  declared bankrupt and ordered to sell all his assets to repay debtors, forcing the family to leave their  Clearwater Bay home.
Soon after, in 2007, Hamilton broke off his relationship with Jodia, who was fiercely loyal and protective of her father. He explained in his autobiography he knew her parents needed her home in Hong Kong.
Despite the split, they remained in contact and stayed friends. 
Jodia and a group of Hong Kong friends flew to Shanghai to see him in the 2007 Grand Prix and were photographed with members of Hamilton's team at official McLaren hospitality events.
Although her former boyfriend was photographed dating other women shortly after their split, Jodia remained loyal, describing him as a 'kind and caring person' in a rare 2007 interview. She is said to have turned down offers believed to be in excess of HK$1 million from British newspapers in 2007 to tell the story of her romance with Hamilton.
She told one friend: 'We've had four wonderful years together and we're still friends. 
'We've always tried to keep our lives and relationship private and there's no reason why it should be exposed now.'
Ma, who founded Moulin as sole proprietor in 1960, was convicted after the jury spent three days  deliberating. He will be sentenced on December 1 and faces up to 14 years in prison.
His son Cary Ma Lit-kin, 46,  Jodia's half brother, admitted the same charges as his father and one other of conspiring to defraud 18 banks by falsifying invoices to obtain credit facilities.
Of the eight other defendants, two more had pleaded guilty, two were convicted and three were found not guilty of all charges. 
The jury failed to reach a verdict on one defendant, who was found not guilty on two out of three charges.



How shamed tycoon helped Hamilton on road to glory