HKSAR v. LIU PO SHING

DCCC316/2009

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 316 OF 2009

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  You have been convicted by this court after trial of the offence of dealing with property known or believed to represent the proceeds of an indictable offence, contrary to section 5(1) and 25(1) and (3) of the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance.

2.  The amount involved was $3,037,249.90. That sum is the Hong Kong dollar equivalent of a sum of US$380,406.09 that was remitted into the account of your company, Sun Polo Investment Consultant Limited, on 19 June 2008. That sum represents the proceeds of a theft in the United States of America. A Mr and Mrs Scott had obtained a home equity line of credit of US$400,000 from their bank, the Severn Savings Bank, situated in Baltimore, Maryland.

3.  On 16 June 2008, Severn Savings Bank received an application purportedly signed by Mr Scott requesting that a loan of US$380,438.13 from the line of credit be deposited into Sun Polo’s US dollar account in Hong Kong. As a result, US$380,406.09 was credited into Sun Polo’s account on 19 June. Neither Mr nor Mrs Scott had applied for this loan nor had they authorised anyone to do so.

4.  On the day this sum of money arrived in Hong Kong, you went to the Standard Chartered Bank and converted the US dollars into HK$3,037,249.90, the amount referred to in the charge. During the course of the day, you went from one branch of Standard Chartered Bank to another in Kowloon and drew out almost the whole of this sum of Hong Kong dollars in cash.

5.  When you were interviewed by the police, you claimed that you believed that this money was being used to finance the purchase of a Chinese painting by an American named Mark Grande from a mainlander, a Mr Gu Junyang. You admitted that you received a reward of about US$20,000 simply for allowing Sun Polo’s bank account to be used to finance the transaction.

6.  As I have said in my reasons for verdict, I am satisfied that you knew that that this account was untrue. I am satisfied that you were well aware that you were dealing with the proceeds of criminal activity. As I also said in my reasons for verdict, I believe that your reward may have been US$19,000 rather than US$20,000 based on documents that were clearly prepared to conceal the true nature of this transaction if inquiries were made.

7.  I bear in mind that there is no evidence that you were aware of the exact nature of the criminal offence by which or through which this money was obtained. I also bear in mind that although I have heard evidence of another similar transaction with which you were involved, which involved a greater sum of money, it is only for this offence I am now sentencing you.

8.  An aggravating feature of your offence is the fact that the original offence was committed in the United States and the proceeds remitted out of the United States to Hong Kong. Presumably this was done to make detection more difficult and possibly persuade the police in the United States that the case was not worth pursuing.

9.  This was obviously a carefully planned offence. You were involved in the fabrication of documents designed to deceive those who might investigate what had occurred.

10.  Bearing in mind all the circumstances, in my view, the appropriate starting point for this offence is 3½ years’ imprisonment. I find no circumstance that warrants any discount from that sentence. Although you are a man of 65, this is not a case of a man who has reached that age without committing any previous offence. You have a long criminal record which includes offences of fraud. As recently as 2004, you were sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment for an offence of causing a copy of a false instrument, which I am told related to the use of false letters of credit. The sentence that I pass is 3½ years’ imprisonment.