Exclusive | Hong Kong man among nine standing trial in Shenzhen over kidnapping of Bossini heiress Queenie Rosita Law
Trial begins at Shenzhen Intermediate Court on Thursday, but lawyers have questioned the arrangement for mainland courts to handle the case
A Hong Kong man is among nine people standing trial in Shenzhen on Thursday over the high-profile kidnapping of an heiress to apparel chain Bossini last year.
The trial will be held at the Shenzhen Intermediate Court and is expected to last two days.
Lawyers on both sides of the border have questioned the arrangement for mainland courts to handle the case, noting that the principal acts took place in Hong Kong – at the Sai Kung home of Queenie Rosita Law, the granddaughter of Bossini founder Law Ting-pong.
She was held captive for three days before being freed in April last year after a ransom of HK$28 million was paid.
But mainland authorities insisted they had jurisdiction over the case, arguing the gang had plotted the crime in Shenzhen.
Hong Kong and the mainland have no fugitive transfer agreements in place.
Six of the mainlanders face kidnapping charges, while a seventh man and the Hongkonger, a middle-aged, long-time mainland resident, were charged with handling stolen property, sources with knowledge of the case told the Post.
The ninth man is accused of arranging illegal passage.
All the suspects were caught in Guangdong and Guizhou provinces shortly after Hong Kong police arrested an alleged kidnapper, Zheng Xingwang, at the city’s immigration control point on May 3 last year. He is the only suspect in the case whose trial will be held in Hong Kong.
Law Society vice-president Thomas So agreed that mainland authorities had jurisdiction over the case, which is of a “cross-border” nature.
“While the kidnapping took place in Hong Kong, some of the plotting was done on the mainland,” he said. “If either of the jurisdictions makes the arrests, the trial can take place there.”
However, University of Hong Kong principal law lecturer Eric Cheung Tat-ming said the case highlighted the lack of mechanisms under which Hong Kong could prove itself a more suitable venue than the mainland to hear certain cases.
That, he said, was a debate that could be traced back to the trial of “Big Spender” Cheung Tsz-keung by Guangdong courts in the 1990s. Cheung was sentenced to death and executed.
A mainland lawyer involved in the kidnapping case, who refused to be named, agreed that Hong Kong’s judicial independence would be eroded in this case.
The Department of Justice refused to comment on the case.
To help mainland authorities process the prosecution, Hong Kong police were understood to have provided their public security counterparts across the border with related documents and photographs of HK$4 million worth of jewellery stolen from the Bossini heiress’ Sai Kung home during the abduction. It is understood most of the stolen jewellery was recovered on the mainland.
A painstaking cross-border hunt for the cash ended earlier this month when Hong Kong police found HK$6.35 million of the ransom buried in Ma On Shan Country Park. The site was close to where police recovered HK$15 million in August last year. The sites were also near a cave where Law was held captive. Another HK$6 million in ransom money was recovered on the mainland.
