Sing Tao News chairman Charles Ho Tsu-kwok yesterday said he would not ask chief executive candidate Leung Chun-ying to quit as a non-executive director of the media group despite Leung saying the group was using the press to smear him.
Ho said he did not doubt Leung's integrity. 'Otherwise, I would not have invited him to sit on the board.'
The drama took a new twist yesterday as Ho called an unscheduled press conference at which he attacked Leung and questioned his ability to govern Hong Kong.
Ho dismissed Leung's accusation that the Sing Tao group had been conducting a smear campaign against him, calling the allegations 'total nonsense'.
He said he had reread news articles carried by his group's Sing Tao Daily and Eastweek magazine which he thought had upset Leung, and found nothing wrong with them.
Ho said the reports about Leung's business losses - and about a judge rejecting Leung's testimony in court in 2002 - were all based on correct information.
He accepted that the choice of words in the headline of one Sing Tao Daily report last month 'might not have been the best'. It suggested Leung 'lost all the money in his pocket in one go' after a business failure.
