Rafael Hui given ‘very rare’ HK$5.4m loans by SHKP subsidiary, graft trial hears
Co-defendant of former chief secretary approved the requests, court hears; HK$3m never repaid
Former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan obtained HK$5.4 million in "very rare" unsecured loans from a Sun Hung Kai Properties subsidiary, the High Court heard yesterday.
The decisions to approve the three loan applications for the man who later became the city's No 2 official in 2005 were all made by Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, the current SHKP co-chairman. Kwok is also a defendant in the high-profile corruption trial, which has heard he and his brother and co-chairman Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong allegedly gave tens of millions of dollars to Hui to be their "eyes and ears" in government.
Hui "never repaid" HK$3 million of the loans to the SHKP subsidiary Honour Finance, according to Alex Au Mo-cheung, who retired as the firm's chief executive in 2011.
"In fact, it was very rare for Honour Finance to provide unsecured loans," Au, who handled two of Hui's three loan applications between 2000 and 2004, testified. "The provision of loans to persons who are not [SHKP property] purchasers was not [part] of our ordinary business," he said.
"Of course, Mr Hui was not an ordinary client," Au testified. "My colleagues and I were very careful in doing our work. We all knew that Mr Hui was a public figure."
Hui's first loan was approved in 2000, after "Mr Raymond Kwok passed me a handwritten note on which it was written that an unsecured loan in the amount of 0.9 million was being asked for ... by Mr Rafael Hui," Au said.
Hui sought what prosecutor David Perry QC called a "favourable" interest rate at "below prime" - in vain. "As a borrower of course he would like to have the lowest possible interest rate," said Au. "However, finally ... it was decided that the interest rate should be fixed at the prime rate."