Former champion racehorse trainer Brian Kan Ping-chee was ordered to serve a 14-week jail term on Friday after the High Court rejected his appeal against his conviction over election corruption.
Kan, 75, must immediately serve his jail term after Mr Justice Derek Pang Wai-cheong, of the Court of First Instance, refused his bail application.
Kan’s lawyers intend to take to case to the Court of Final Appeal, where they have 28 days to file an appeal.
Kan, 75, was convicted last November of one count of engaging in corrupt conduct during an election - offering a HK$130,000 bribe to a village representative to vote for him. He denied the charge at his trial.
He later appealed against the verdict, saying trial Magistrate Symon Wong Yu-wing had failed to consider fingerprint evidence produced by the defence, which challenged the claim that Kan had offered money to Liu.
Judge Pang ruled on Friday that although Wong’s original verdict was “simplistic” and barely met the judicial standard, the conclusion was not flawed.
He also ruled that the evidence by Kan’s forensic expert, relating to finger marks on the banknotes, was of “limited value”. The judge accepted police forensic experts’ claims that the chance of detecting fingerprints on banknotes was slim. He also accepted that the village representative who raised the bribery allegation was a credible witness.