Donald Tsang played by his own rules when taking private jets and yachts, Hong Kong court hears

Donald Tsang Yam-kuen played by his own rules as chief executive when taking rides on the private jets and yachts of wealthy friends and only had to observe declaration codes covering his investments voluntarily, a court heard on Friday.

There was nothing in writing about the rules associated with travel expenses in his office’s records and the public was kept in the dark on the arrangements.

Tsang adopted the rules in 2007 and first applied them when he accepted a trip to Macau on a friend’s yacht, but even one of his secretaries was unaware of their existence until a few months before Tsang’s term of office ended in 2012, the High Court was told.

The guidelines were contained in a document produced by prosecutors and which took the form of a reply written by Kevin Choi, deputy private secretary of the Chief Executive’s Office in 2012. It was sent to an independent committee that Tsang had set up to review the city’s declaration framework for top officials following the heightened scrutiny of his own behaviour that year.

The committee, the prosecutors alleged earlier, was Tsang’s attempt to shift the focus from his possible misconduct to the wider scope of the declaration framework.

Tsang, 72, has pleaded not guilty to a count of accepting an advantage as chief executive and two others of misconduct in public office.

The prosecution alleges that as chief executive, and presiding over the Executive Council, he failed to disclose his dealings with businessman Bill Wong Cho-bau over a three-storey Shenzhen penthouse he intended to rent in his retirement.