An airport ground staff member has been convicted and another acquitted after they were accused of helping seven stowaways - including a young mainlander disguised as an elderly Caucasian - to board planes with false documents.
Chau Pak-kin, 27, was convicted in the District Court yesterday on one count of conspiracy to obtain services by deception, while Chan Wing-chung, 27, was acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
Delivering his verdict, Judge Albert Wong Sung-hau said both defendants were dishonest in their statements given to police and immigration officers.
He rejected Chau's repeated denials that he had played a role in helping the stowaways, saying he 'was not merely a bystander ... [he] could not have known anything unless he was a party'.
But the judge said that while Chan was also dishonest in giving his accounts to immigration officers and had evaded some questions, he did not make any statement that proved he had committed an offence.
The court heard that at the time the offence was committed last year the pair were ground service agents for Singapore Air Terminal Services, responsible for inspecting passengers' documents and scanning passes at the boarding gates of Hong Kong International Airport.