Former Hong Kong minister Patrick Ho’s attempt to fend off bribery charges faces rebuttal in US court
Lawyers for defence say their client was not read his rights and prosecutors were taking too long sifting through emails. The prosecutors disagree
United States prosecutors on Wednesday fired back at former Hong Kong minister Patrick Ho Chi-ping’s bid to get most of the bribery charges he faces, along with email evidence, dropped.
The US Attorney for New York’s Southern District Court gave a point-by-point rebuttal of arguments Ho’s lawyers made last month, in the form of two 50-page documents submitted to the court ahead of the Thursday hearing for Ho’s third attempt to get bail.
Ho, Hong Kong’s home affairs secretary from 2002 to 2007, was arrested at John F Kennedy International Airport last November and a month later was charged on eight counts – three of money laundering and five of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by offering US$2.9 million (HK$22.8 million) worth of kickbacks to government officials in Africa. The kickbacks, it is alleged, were intended to help secure oil rights in Uganda and Chad for a Shanghai-based energy firm he represented.
Ho pleaded not guilty and has been behind bars since, his trial date tentatively set for November.
Last month, his lawyers made a fresh push to get all of the money laundering charges and three of the FCPA charges dropped. Separately, they insisted that US authorities had illegally obtained evidence and asked the court to block at least 35,000 pages of evidence, mostly emails seized from Ho’s Google and Yahoo accounts under warrant.