Celebrity tutor Weslie Siao all smiles as Hong Kong prosecutors change tack in exam-leak case

A Hong Kong celebrity tutor accused of receiving leaked public examination questions emerged all smiles from court on Tuesday after prosecutors changed tactics in handling his case.

Prosecutors have abandoned their use of a “one-size-fits-all” offence in smartphone-related crimes to prosecute Weslie Siao Chi-yung, 42, and his three co-defendants, bringing new charges of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.

Their application to amend the charges came after the city’s top court unanimously ruled last month that the offence of “obtaining access to a computer for criminal or dishonest gain” should not apply to a defendant’s own phone or computer, as it would have in the present case.

The Post understands the proposed charges would include two counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office and a similar count without the conspiracy element, with Siao facing two – instead of three – charges.

Still, his lawyer expressed surprise at the extent of the proposed amendment and complained that prosecutors had used the misconduct charge to bypass the statutory time limit for bringing breach-of-secrecy cases arising from public exams.

The case will return to West Kowloon Court on June 18 after acting principal magistrate Ada Yim Shun-yee granted a defence application for more time to consider the prosecutors’ proposal.

Siao, an A-list instructor from a tutoring empire in Hong Kong, was charged in June last year alongside his wife, Tsai Ying-ying, 33, also a Chinese-language tutor at the school, and teachers Cheung Kwok-kuen and Ng Wang-leung, both 43.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption alleged that Siao received confidential questions for the 2016 and 2017 Chinese exams via phone messages from Cheung and Tsai, as well as getting confidential information about a briefing session on the 2017 exam from Ng.

The alleged offences were said to have spanned from March 11, 2016 to April 5, 2017.

At the time Tsai was nominated to serve as an invigilator with the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority for the 2017 Chinese exams of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education, while Cheung and Ng worked for the authority as oral examiners for the 2016 and 2017 Chinese exams respectively.

The four were originally scheduled to enter their pleas in August last year.

But their case was put on hold following a similar one involving four teachers accused of leaking entrance exam questions, in which the High Court found it problematic for prosecutors to rely on the offence of obtaining access to a computer when a defendant had used their own device.

That ruling was unanimously upheld last month by five Court of Final Appeal judges.