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SCMP Reporter

Former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen said he was "devastated" by the conviction of his former chief secretary, Rafael Hui, in a letter sent to court as part of Hui's mitigating plea.
Hui was found guilty last week of bribery and misconduct in public office, for accepting hidden payments from a billionaire property tycoon, Sun Hung Kai Properties former co-chairman Thomas Kwok.
Tsang, who appointed Hui to the post in 2005, said:  "Mr Hui is a person of extraordinary intelligence [and] interpersonal skills."
It continued: "Records showed Rafael Hui performed brilliantly." He added that some officials knew of Hui's lavish lifestyle and understood it was his "personal choice".
The text in full:
The Honourable Mr Justice Macrae
The High Court of the First Instance
	Hong Kong
Your Lordship:
Like many who have served the public for many years and have known Mr Rafael Hui well, I was devastated when I heard that the jury had found him guilty of misconduct in public office. 
I believe that Your Lordship will wish to know as much as possible about Mr Hui as a person and as a public servant before Your Lordship passes sentence on him. With this in mind, I write this petition to Court as someone who has known Mr Hui for over 40 years, and had worked closely with him for 12 years immediately before he stepped down as Chief Secretary in 2007. 
Mr Hui is a person of extraordinarily high intelligence, inter-personal skill and implementation ability. These qualities together made him one of the most outstanding officials who served across the transition of administration of Hong Kong in 1997. Mr Hui is widely known among his colleagues and friends as kind and exceedingly generous. He offered voluntary services to the promotion of the arts and music in Hong Kong, as vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Festival Society, member of the Hong Kong International Film Festival Society Ltd, and member of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Society Ltd.
Mr Hui's entire career is on public record. On his retirement as Chief Secretary for Administration in 2007, I wrote him a valedictory letter highlighting his service to the public since he joined the Civil Service in 1970. This letter, as I read in the press, has since been made public and formed part of the evidence before the Court during his trial. I do not propose to repeat what it says, but I crave Your Lordship's indulgence to read it again, and note the following two additional observations of mine, which were not elaborated in the valedictory letter. The first one is of a general character and the other relates to a specific episode. Both of them demonstrate the signal contributions made by Mr Hui to Hong Kong society.
In 2005, the Central People's Government accepted my nomination and appointed Mr Hui as Chief Secretary for Administration. At that time, the local community was in a parlous state, diffident about its own future, having been ravaged by the controversy over the implementation of Article 45 of the Basic Law and the onslaught of the SARS epidemic which took many precious lives.
As Chief Secretary, the most senior official assisting the Chief Executive, Mr Hui carried the pivotal role of re-establishing a constructive and functional relationship with all parties in the Legislative Council and with the news media.
Most of all he had to put together, in a short time, a legislative and policy agenda which could inspire greater confidence in the general public about the direction and style of the new administration as well as about the fundamental stability and prosperity of Hong Kong. This required a deep understanding of public sentiments and the of the Central Government, as well as the concerns varied abilities across executive departments and their heads in implementing new policies. The Chief Secretary had to hold effective authority and a high level of respect among his Principal Official colleagues in order to arbitrate and prioritise their contending policy initiatives and to build a robust consensus within the Administration in defending the final agenda before the Legislature. Ultimately, he had to persuade a majority in the Legislative Council to pass the agenda items into law and sanction the resources involved
 I cannot recall any Chief Secretary or Colonial Secretary over the previous 50 years before 2005, who had to face such an onerous menu of work fraught with uch conflicting political, social and economic interests and challenges. 
Yet records showed that Mr Hui performed brilliantly. Important and controversial pieces of legislation passed through Legislative Council during this period. Confidence quickly retumed in the local community and among international investors. Much of this was team work and the result of collaboration with the Legislature, but, in my view, the leadership and personal efforts of Mr Hui constituted a critical element of the recovery of Hong Kong during this difficult period of our history. Throughout this period, none of us in the upper echelons of the Administration had ever doubted the integrity and impartiality of Mr Hui in discharging his official duties. Indeed he passed several rounds of positive vetting before the Handover and as well as personality checks after the Handover. Some of us were aware of Mr Hui's lavish lifestyle, but we took that as his personal choice and a benefit flowing from his family endowment in Hong Kong and Macau.
Specifically in summer 1998, a year after the handover of administration, a colossal financial crisis swept through East Asia. The monetary systems and securities markets of several neighbouring economies fell one after another, from Korea to Thailand and Malaysia. In early August the international market speculators descended on Hong Kong. I was then Financial Secretary on a mission to Istanbul in Turkey to secure visa free access for Hong Kong SAR passport holders. Mr Hui was Secretary for the Treasury. The attack on our currency was swift and overwhelming. Mr Hui who held the fort for me at the time reacted equally swiftly. He assessed the likely impact on our financial systems. Together with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), he told me the gravity of the situation. He persuaded me to cut short my official trip and returned to Hong Kong in order to work out a counter strategy, which I did.
Mr Hui, working closely with the HKMA, masterminded a comprehensive plan to mount a series of intervention activities in our securities and currency markets within days. I had been, by nature and training, a strong believer in the free market and in its self-healing ability. It was a Herculean task on the part of Mr Hui and my colleagues in the HKMA to persuade me that our celebrated free market had ceased to function against the ruthless manipulations in our key financial sectors by foreign hedge funds. our free economy was on the brink of imminent collapse following our neighbours. 
Eventually, I came round to Mr Hui's assessment, finalized our intervention strategy, secured the understanding of Mr Tung, the then Chief Executive, and mounted our intervention on 14 August 1998. The support from the Central Government and from the local population promptly followed after we explained publicly the rationale of our extraordinary action. The campaign lasted for two weeks. I must recapitulate here the critical part played by Mr Hui in this campaign. 
First, not only was he one of the chief architects of the intervention strategy, he followed the market reactions minute by minute throughout the campaign. On several occasions we fine-tuned our tactics, at the behest of Mr Hui and HKMA, in response to intransigent speculative assaults. These adjustments, including defensive actions in the futures market, worked. Much credit goes to the perspicacity, ingenuity and courage of Mr Hui. 
Second, while I was on my travels in September 1998 to calm the international markets about Hong Kong, and to persuade the monetary authorities and business leaders in Europe and America that our intervention was essential and ultimately beneficial to the open market, and that we would continue to espouse fundamental market principles, Mr Hui and HKMA were busily engaged in ironing out the best exit strategy for disposing of the commercial stocks and shares which the HKMA had purchased during our intervention. Hence the birth of the Hong Kong Tracker Fund, which aimed to sell back to the public the financial interests in those shares without diminishing their market values. The Tracker Fund proved to be a huge success.
Finally, in the aftermath of this crisis, Mr Hui spearheaded major reforms of our securities markets, stock clearance and settlement arrangements as well as the formation of a new and publicly listed Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This particular exercise, despite vehement initial opposition from the brokerage industry, was carried through and was regarded as a role model by other economies. Mr Hui's contributions in this regard were unrivalled.
The outcome of the entire campaign has been widely praised as a great triumph in Hong Kong, elsewhere in China as well as by many foreign financial authorities. The success of our intervention also marked the end of the Asian financial crisis which started in 1997. 
According to my memory, the HKMA deployed a total of HK$118 billion during the intervention. The Tracker Fund that we launched in November 1999, for selling shares purchased, raised over HK$33 billion at the initial the public offer, the largest IPO in Asia outside Japan at that time. The bulk of the remaining shares was subsequently sold in batches through similar mechanisms. The Exchange Fund has made profit of well over HK$100 a billion in this exercise. We started the campaign on 14 August 1998 when the Hang Seng Index (HS) was around 6,000 points and falling rapidly. The purchasing operations ended on 28 August 1998 when the HIS reached 7,800. The Tracker Fund IPO launched when the HSI stood at was 12,800, and within a year the market rose to 18,000. 
More significant, Hong Kong's position as a global financial centre, with a triple "A" credit rating (only two in Asia), was firmly established as an inheritance for subsequent administrations. We must not overlook Mr Hui's contribution at the time. 
Your Lordship, there were other episodes which would demonstrate how the services of Mr Hui have improved the fortune and life of Hong Kong. The shortage of time and the absence of source files in composing this petition on a Saturday have prevented me from accounting for them. In the words of a widely respected former Executive Councillor, Mr Hui has made humongous contributions to Hong Kong, and justice would not be done if they were not accounted for in passing judgment on him. 
I pray that Your Lordship will consider my petition. And I entreat Your Lordship for leniency in meting out your sentence against Mr Hui.
Your respectfully,
[Signed]


IN FULL: Donald Tsang's letter to court on Rafael Hui

Ex-Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang. Photo: Xinhua

Big names make pleas for leniency as Hui and Thomas Kwok face sentencing for graft

(From left) Thomas Chan and Thomas Kwok, formerly of Sun Hung Kai Properties, and ex-chief secretary Rafael Hui are taken to the High Court yesterday. Photo: Felix Wong


No time for a shave? Hui arrives in court in a police van sporting grey stubble. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Something to smile about? Rafael Hui grins as he is escorted to court. Photo: Felix Wong

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