HKSAR v. POON LOK MAN

DCCC1383/2011

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 1383 OF 2011

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  The defendant pleaded guilty to three charges of dealing with proceeds of an indictable offence. The facts are simple and straight forward.

2.  The defendant held certain bank accounts.  He allowed his accounts to be used by others to deposit and withdraw money into and out of.  The total amount dealt with was around $2 million.  The charged date as set out in the charges is sometime in October 2009.  There is no evidence that the defendant had known anything about the underlying crime, he just allowed his accounts to be used by this Ah Yung whom he met in Macau.

3.  The defendant dealt with the money in the accounts by handling certain remittances and withdrawing the money and passing the money to the said Ah Yung.  The defendant did not receive any direct monetary reward for allowing his accounts to be used by Ah Yung, but Ah Yung did waive a debt owed by the defendant to him, which was between HK$50,000 to $60,000.

4.  The defendant has two previous convictions although the first conviction is to be considered spent.  The second conviction was actually a conviction for trafficking in dangerous drugs in Thailand.  He was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to life sentence. 

5.  In 1996 by way of amnesty, the sentence was commuted to 40 years and the defendant was transferred back to Hong Kong in 1997 to serve the remainder of the sentence.  Eventually in 2008, the defendant’s sentence was revoked and he was released in May 2008, therefore, he had been in jail for around 20 years since his conviction in 1988 in Thailand.  There was nothing special in his personal circumstances otherwise.    

6.  The main consideration in sentencing for money laundering cases is the amount of money being laundered, which in our present case is around $2 million odd. In the recent case of HKSAR v Boma Amaso, CACC 335/2010, the Court of Appeal summarised from pervious cases the factors to take into consideration when sentencing in money laundering cases.  I have taken those factors into consideration.

7.  At the very last sentence of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the Boma case,  the Court described the petty crook who is paid a small sum to open an account and hand over its operation to another with no more participation and no more knowledge than that it is going to be used for some sort of crime as much less culpable than an offender of a different sort. 

8.  In our present case, the defendant had no knowledge of the crime behind the proceeds and all that he did was to allow his bank accounts to be used for dealing with the money.

9.  Although there was no direct payment to the defendant,  a debt in a sum of around $50,000 to $60,000 had been waived upon his agreement to assist in the money laundering, it would appear, and I find, that the defendant was at the bottom of the chain of culpability and although the amount waived is more than a few hundred dollars, he is still a petty crook.

10.  I am grateful for the written submission in mitigation prepared by Miss Lin and I agree with her suggestion in adopting 3 years’ imprisonment as a starting point for each of the three charges.

11.  I will grant the defendant the full one-third discount reducing the sentences to that of 2 years’ imprisonment.  I order that 8 months of Charge 3 to be served consecutively to the rest of the sentence, which are to be served concurrently,  making the total term of imprisonment 2 years and 8 months.