HK$7m cheque was a 'gift to SHKP executive maligned by Walter Kwok', court told

Property tycoon Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong gave a subordinate a HK$7 million cheque as a "gift" in 2008 to apologise for serious allegations that his eldest brother, Walter Kwok Ping-sheung, made against him, the High Court heard yesterday.

The subordinate, Sun Hung Kai Properties executive director Thomas Chan Kui-yuen, also got a HK$5 million bonus in April that year. He said it was a normal bonus payment on which he later paid income tax of HK$750,000. The two sums, totalling HK$12 million, were therefore not, as the prosecution alleged, meant to reimburse him for forwarding bribes to former chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan in 2007, Chan testified in his graft trial.

Prosecutors claim SHKP co-chairmen Thomas Kwok and Raymond Kwok Ping-luen gave Hui HK$8.5 million and HK$11 million in 2005 and 2007, respectively, via Chan and Hui's friend Francis Kwan Hung-sang, so Hui would be the firm's "inside man" in the government. Yesterday, Chan began his first day of defence testimony under examination by his lawyer, Ian Winter QC.

He said Walter Kwok, then SHKP chairman, was angry at him for being too slow in paying his kidnap ransom in 1997 and therefore brought very serious accusations against him, in 2003 and again in 2008.

Chan's name was cleared in a 2008 investigation by accounting firm KPMG. Thomas Kwok apologised in the middle of that year and gave him the cheque.

Chan also said firmly that his loyalty to the developer he had served for over 40 years would not lead him to commit crime or graft. "I am a loyal employee but not a very, very loyal employee," he said, referring to prosecutors' description of him as a "very, very loyal employee" who would do anything for his employer.

Winter noted that Chan's family trust held assets of HK$1 billion and so he had no reason to take part in criminal deals.