Court rejects former Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang’s appeal against misconduct conviction
The 73-year-old was not in court to hear the judgment, because of illness
But the ex-chief executive still has one more chance to appeal, by seeking leave from the Court of Final Appeal. His lawyers already applied to do so, two weeks ago.
Court of Appeal justices Wally Yeung Chun-kuen, Andrew Macrae and Derek Pang Wai-cheong on Friday refused to certify that a point of law of great and general importance was involved in the high-profile case.
They also ordered Tsang to pay the prosecutors’ costs of handling his application, which they concluded was “not only without merit but … was also without the distillation and focus that is expected of such applications”.
The 73-year-old, who was chief executive from 2005 to 2012, had planned to make the penthouse his temporary retirement home. He began negotiations to rent the property, which belonged to a company chaired by mainland businessman Bill Wong Cho-bau, at a time when Tsang was in charge of approving licence applications from radio station Wave Media, of which Wong was a majority shareholder.