Controversial Hong Kong businessman Lew Mon-hung found guilty of perverting course of justice, faces 18 months in jail
He sent letters and emails to city’s chief executive and anti-graft head asking them to halt investigation
Controversial businessman Lew Mon-hung has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for perverting the course of justice over letters and emails he sent to Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and the city’s anti-graft chief in a bid to halt an investigation into him.
The two letters and two emails came back to bite Lew – despite his earlier acquittal over the very case he sought to scuttle – at the District Court on Monday. He was found guilty of one count of perverting the course of public justice.
Lew tried to stop the investigation for a High Court case concerning Pearl Oriental Oil, the listed company of which he was once vice-chairman. He was acquitted in that case.
Sentencing Lew, Judge Frankie Yiu Fun-che said: “This is serious in that the defendants sent letters to the highest-ranking officials in the administrative government, the chief executive and the head of an executive department.”
Lew, 67, was accused of sending Leung and Simon Peh, commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a total of four letters and emails on January 9 and 10, 2013, after he was arrested and investigated for fraud.
Yiu yesterday found these documents contained threatening phrases.