HKSAR v. CHONG KA HO

 DCCC413/2010

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONGSPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 413 OF 2010

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  Chong Ka-ho, you have been convicted on your own plea of conspiracy to deal with property known or reasonably believed to represent the proceeds of an indictable offence. The charge relates to sums totalling $2,824,446.30 which were deposited into your bank account with the Bank of China between 1 May 2006 and 9 July 2008 when you closed that account.

2.  You have admitted that in about May 2006, you handed over the bankcard in relation to that account to a man you knew as a loan shark, knowing that he would use the account for his loansharking activities. You have also admitted that when you received monthly bank statements, you were aware of the numerous transactions being conducted through that bank account.

3.  I accept for the purpose of sentence that you yourself had been a victim of this same loan shark. I have been told that in late 2005, you found yourself in financial difficulty and asked to borrow $2,000 from this man. Although it turned out that he treated it as a loan of $2,000, you only received $1,600. After about three months, you could no longer afford to pay the instalments the loan shark was demanding. Nevertheless, he continued to demand payments and threatened to cause trouble to your family.

4.  In about May 2006, he offered to waive $600 of the interest which he alleged you owed him if you allowed him to use your Bank of China bank account. You agreed and handed over your bankcard.

5.  While I am prepared to accept that it was the pressure of your debt to the loan shark and his offer to deduct $600 from what he claimed you owed him that led you to allow him to use your account, I am not satisfied that you have been frank with the court as to why you allowed the situation to continue for more than two years before you closed the account. There have been a number of inconsistencies in what Mr Tang has told me on your behalf. At one stage, Mr Tang informed me that in November 2006, after there had been red paint splashed outside your home and the keyhole had been blocked, your father had made a complaint to the police and informed the police that you had handed your bank account to the loan shark. Later, after the prosecution said that it would not accept that account, you withdrew this allegation.

6.  From what I have been told by the prosecution, it is true that your father did make a complaint to the police in March 2007 about demand notes and other harassment at your home, but he made no mention of your bank account. He told the police that he had lost contact with you for about a month and believed that the harassment was connected with debts owed by you.

7.  I have been told that at some stage your aunt paid off the debt on your behalf, and later you left Hong Kong to work in Shanghai. At one point, Mr Tang explained your failure to do anything about the account as being because the fact that you had given the loan shark your bank account had gone out of your mind. I do not accept that that can have been the case.

8.  Another explanation Mr Tang advanced on your behalf was that you had asked for return of the card but the loan shark had claimed that money was still owing, and out of fear for yourself and your family, you had not done anything about the bankcard. That alleged fear does not appear, however, to have prevented you closing the account in July 2008 when a staff member of the Bank of China suggested you did so in order to open a new account.

9.  As I have said, you admitted receiving bank statements of your account and noticing numerous transactions go through your account which you believed were the proceeds of loansharking. Yet you took no steps to close the account for over two years nor did you ever make any complaint to the police.

10.  While taking into account the circumstances that led you to commit this offence in the first place, the courts are bound to take a serious view of this sort of offence. Loansharking is a serious social evil. As you yourself will know, it preys on the vulnerability of others and brings misery to its victims. Loan sharks are unlikely to use their own accounts for their evil activities. When others allow their accounts to be used for this purpose, they are contributing to a perpetuation of this evil.

11.  In deciding on the appropriate starting point in this case, I have borne in mind all the circumstances, including what led you to hand over your bank account in the first place. I bear in mind that you are a young man of previous good character and that this was an account which you had opened previously to receive your salary. It was not an account specifically opened for the purpose of money laundering. I bear in mind that your role was only to provide your bank account, that your only reward was forgiveness of the alleged debt of $600. I also bear in mind that there is no international dimension to this case.

12.  In these circumstances, I am satisfied that the appropriate starting point is 2 years’ imprisonment. Your plea of guilty entitles you to the usual discount of one-third. Apart from the factor of your plea, I accept that this offence has led you to lose your job in the mainland where you were apparently highly regarded and that the pressure of your detention may well have contributed to the miscarriage suffered by your wife earlier this year. I am prepared to reflect these consequences to you by reducing the sentence by a further 2 months.

13.  The sentence that I pass in this case is one of 14 months’ imprisonment.