The former chairman and financial controller of China Sciences Conservational Power were jailed for six years yesterday in a case a judge described as a 'Hong Kong story turned sour'.
The former chairman, Hon Ming-kong, 43, and Anthony Chow Ho-tung, 50, received their sentences at the District Court after they were earlier convicted of multiple charges following a trial spanning more than three years. They were also suspended from being company directors for 10 years.
Another defendant who was an employee of a company subsidiary, Kan Lai Lai-kan, 45, was jailed for three years and nine months in the same case. A fourth defendant, impresario Abba Chan Tat-chee, 64, was jailed for three years on Monday after earlier pleading guilty.
Charges including conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to steal, theft, and publishing a false statement had been laid in allegations involving HK$72 million against the three. They were accused of conspiring with Chan and others to steal company funds, and the court was also told of a series of cover-ups.
Each of the three faced a different combination of the charges and pleaded not guilty. With the exception of one count of conspiracy to defraud that was dismissed against Hon, they were convicted of all the charges they faced.
Hon, who moved to Hong Kong when he was 11, had worked as an assistant in a trading company before starting a company and seeing business prosper - which District Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi described as a 'successful Hong Kong story'. Chow became a certified public accountant after studying economics, finance and accounting in Britain.
The judge said Hon and Chow climbed up the social ladder through hard work and that the case was 'a kind of Hong Kong story turned sour'. The judge said he considered the two the masterminds who orchestrated the schemes and he accepted there had been no evidence that Kan had derived any financial benefit from the offences.