Secret recordings purporting to reveal anti-graft officers coaching the key witness in a HK$100 million fraud trial were played to the District Court yesterday.
ICAC chief investigator Kevin Cho Wing-nin, 47, and senior investigator Ben Chan Kai-hung, 39, were allegedly heard telling Cheung Ching-ho, 39, how to answer difficult questions in court with the 'trump card'' - by simply claiming that he did not remember.
During the recording, alleged to have been made at a meeting on December 3, 2009, Cheung was also told that he should keep his answers short, using a curt 'I don't remember', 'I disagree', 'correct' and 'incorrect'. He was also told to use simple layman's terms in court when he explained that his role in the financial-derivatives fraud was to lure in investors. The voice alleged to belong to Cho said: 'Judges are ordinary people, too.'
Cho, Chan and assistant investigator John Au Kim-fung, 42, deny charges of perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office. They have been suspended from duty at the Independent Commission Against Corruption pending the outcome of the trial.
Cheung claims to have hidden recording devices under his clothes before two of his six meetings with the anti-corruption officers between November 3 and December 4, 2009.
Cheung was in the witness box to hear the recordings being played in public for the first time yesterday. He resisted giving evidence two days ago citing 'psychiatric pressure', but a psychiatric assessment put to court yesterday indicated that he was mentally fit to continue.
He is serving a 25-month term handed down last June for his part in the fraud. The mastermind, 'King of Warrants' Raymond Ng Chun-to, was jailed for four years in April 2010.