PolyU president’s offshore firms explanation ‘leaves questions unanswered’ say students
Student union representatives will press Professor Timothy Tong Wai-cheung for a thorough explanation in the scandal involving the university’s ownership of BVI firms.
The President of Polytechnic University has come under fire for ducking key questions and refusing to back down in his latest statement, which attempted to cool the controversy surrounding the school’s secret ownership of two offshore firms exposed by the Post.
The PolyU students’ union will issue an open letter on Tuesday to press for a thorough explanation from Professor Timothy Tong Wai-cheung, who the students said had left questions unanswered following his email to staff and pupils on Saturday.
“The senior management defended that the offshore firms are set up as an exit strategy [to shut down some subsidiaries],” Franco Wong Chak-hang, the president of PolyU students’ union, said yesterday. “But it still fails to explain why it could not be done with a local firm.”
The student body will ask for a formal meeting with Tong should management fail to address their concerns, Wong added.
Tong’s letter came after the Panama Papers revealed that the publicly-funded institution had set up two offshore companies in 2012 and 2013 without declaring them in its annual financial statement.
Nicholas Yang Wei-hsiung, now innovation and technology minister, was the executive vice-president of the school at the time, and signed a document facilitating the British Virgin Islands registration.
In Saturday’s email, Tong defended the lack of financial disclosure, saying the decision to use BVI firms had been vetted by an advisory committee.
Labour Party lawmaker Dr Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung, a PolyU academic, was also dissatisfied with Tong’s explanation: “The advisory committee was appointed by the senior management … how can there be any checks and balances?”
But PolyU council member Chan Kam-lam, of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, insisted the matter was “trivial”, saying people who called for “institutional autonomy” should not “intervene” with the school’s policy.
