Former Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang ‘used PR tactics to hide truth about flat’
Prosecutor also accuses him of giving corruption investigators false documents about rental deal
Donald Tsang Yam-kuen used PR tactics to conceal the truth of his dealings from the public, the High Court was told on Tuesday.
As details of his rental deal for the three-storey penthouse in Shenzhen at the centre of the allegations against the former chief executive came to public light in February 2012, in the final stretch of his seven years in the job, Tsang “volunteered himself” to go on a Commercial Radio programme.
However, according to lead prosecutor David Perry QC, “he was concealing the true position [about] what had been going on”.
On the programme, Tsang insisted it never occurred to him that he should declare the interest, adding that “if a declaration was to be made it would be far-fetched”.
But Perry argued that Tsang was not being truthful, because he “had been a member of the government or civil service since 1967” and would have been familiar with civil service codes on declarations of interest.
By appearing on the radio programme, Perry said, “he was trying to manage the situation and limit the criticism”.