HKSAR v. CHAN WAI KEUNG, ALBERT

 DCCC550/2009

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 550 OF 2009

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Defendant, you have pleaded guilty to 20 charges of using a false instrument contrary to section 73 of the Crimes Ordinance, Cap. 200 Laws of Hong Kong.

2.  The particulars of the charges relate to the fraudulent use by yourself of fund requisition notes issued to New World Development between 24 July 2007, Charge 1 to 19 November 2007, Charge 20.

3.  The brief facts which you have admitted indicated that you, being a manager of the New World Development Company, over the material period, used your position in the company to submit to the accounts department fraudulent applications made up either of applications for interest subsidies or applications for remedial work subsidies.

4.  The applications were made by yourself, purportedly on behalf of the owners of the estate, but of course were quite false. On the basis of these applications, which had been purportedly endorsed by an executive director of the company in order to authenticate them, cheques were issued for the amounts contained in each of the charges and the majority of the cheques you deposited into your own savings account.

5.  The total loss to the company over the relevant period was some HK$1.3 million. According to my calculations, some $573,000 you actually deposited into your own savings account. The subject matter of the 20th charge, a sum of $97,000 was never actually deposited into your account as you had been arrested before you had the opportunity to deposit it. A further $240,000 found its way into the account of a Madam Fung Ka-yee, a masseuse who you had befriended.

6.  Other sums of money were put into the accounts of owners, for example, charge 7, the sum of $35,000, charge 14 the sum of $78,500 and charge 18, the sum of $89,400. You had tried to say that these individuals had pressed you into making the applications on their behalf. I do not accept this as it is simply not borne out by the evidence but, in any event, it has no bearing on the ultimate fraud perpetrated and executed by yourself against the company.

7.  I have no doubt that the reason that you committed these offences is that which is touched on in the background report, that is, that some time prior to the commission of these offences, you had incurred heavy credit card debts that eventually led to your bankruptcy and out of greed you found an easy way to obtain money illegally by abusing your position in the company amounting to a breach of trust over a period of 4 months or thereabouts.

8.  In sentencing you I take into account all that has been put forward on your behalf by way of mitigation but I do not accept the proposition put forward that somehow there has been restitution to the company by yourself through your loss of MPF benefits. By the commission of these serious offences you have abrogated your right to receive any benefits from the company whose trust you betrayed.

9.  I note that you have two previous criminal convictions for offences that do not involve dishonesty. They are unrelated and, in any event, predate the commission of the present offences. I will ignore these prior convictions in sentencing you.

10.  I will however give you full credit for your plea of guilty to the offences. Although you indicated your plea of guilty at a late stage, I accept that you did surrender yourself to your employers and the police at your own initiative and that this was done before the victimised company reported the matter themselves.

11.  In sentencing you I adopt a global approach to reflect your overall criminality and I will adopt a starting point of 3 years’ imprisonment on each of these charges, 1 to 20, which I order to run concurrently with each other. To reflect your plea of guilty I will discount this sentence by a third arriving at a total sentence of 2 years’ imprisonment.