HK$4.125 million paid to Rafael Hui as a ‘special bonus’, court hears

Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairman Raymond Kwok Ping-luen denied in 2012 having any knowledge of any illegal payment or bribe to former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan, the High Court heard yesterday.

Kwok also told graft-busters that a sum of HK$4.125 million given to Hui as he was leaving the company's employ as a consultant in 2005 was a special bonus the latter asked for.

He said an SHKP executive had wrongly described the bonus as advance payment of Hui's consultancy fees from April 2005 to February 2006 - a "minor mistake" he said had "given a wrong impression that SHKP continued to pay Hui after he left the group".

Kwok's comments came from a statement submitted to the director of public prosecutions after graft-busters arrested him in March 2012. The statement was read out in court by a prosecutor yesterday.

Billionaire brothers Raymond Kwok and Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong, also SHKP co-chairman, are alleged to have let Hui live rent-free in two SHKP luxury flats in Happy Valley from February 2003 to June 2005, and to have paid tens of millions of dollars for Hui to be their "eyes and ears" in the government.

In the 2012 statement, Raymond Kwok rejected ICAC allegations and said he was a "stranger" to any graft payment allegedly transferred to Hui.