HKSAR v. CHEN LUNG CHEN

DCCC1001/2009

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. 1001 OF 2009

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Reasons for Sentence

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1.  The defendant has pleaded guilty 12 charges of dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of indictable offence. He has accepted the facts put forward by the prosecution. I have convicted him on each of those charges.

2.  He is a Taiwanese passport holder and was recruited in Taiwan to come to Hong Kong and open bank accounts and withdraw sums that had been deposited into those accounts. He was paid for doing this at the rate of $500 per day.

3.  He first came to Hong Kong on 18 March 2009 and over the next two days opened bank accounts with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the Standard Chartered Bank, the Hang Seng Bank and the Bank of China and he then returned to Taiwan on 21 March 2009. The defendant returned on 28 April 2009 and then, after that, withdrew money from these various accounts often on the same day as the money had been paid in.

4.  There are a total of 12 occasions charged. A summary has been prepared of the amounts paid in to the various accounts and, in total, $1,115,494.36 were paid in. Some of these monies were paid to companies called Hong Kong Exchange and Falton Company, being remittance companies before they were paid into the bank accounts held by the defendant.

5.  The money came from a number of destinations, from France, Singapore, Argentina, Canada and all the money at some point entered into the bank accounts and constitute the monies in the 12 charges that the defendant has pleaded guilty to.

6.  The defendant tried to leave Hong Kong on 11 May 2009 and was arrested. The defendant said, in explanation, that he had met a stranger on the streets of Taiwan who had employed him to come to Hong Kong to open bank accounts and withdraw the sums of money deposited for a reward of $500 currency per day.

7.  When he arrived in Hong Kong, he was told to stay in a hotel in Jordan, given a mobile phone with a SIM card and taken to open the bank accounts. The defendant said on each occasion before he withdrew sums of money from the bank accounts, a person telephoned him and arranged to meet him and that they would go to the banks, withdraw the sums of money from the accounts and he would give the cash to that person. Sometimes he withdrew from the cashiers himself and other times from automatic teller machines. He said he felt suspicious but decided to accept the work.

8.  As far as the defendant’s antecedents are concerned, he is aged 24; he is of clear record and educated in Taiwan to Middle School level. He worked in constructions sites, as a butcher and also as a car beautician and obviously did the offences for the reward he received.

9.  The defendant obviously shows remorse by his plea of guilty. I have been referred to a recent case called, Yeung Kin Chai that sets out the principles in money laundering offences. That case says:

“The amount of money laundered is highly relevant on sentence.  Other features that render the offence more serious are the length of time the laundering has subsisted, the degree of the sophistication of the laundering scheme, the number of people involved who are affected and what is referred to as the International element.  Sentences properly contain an element of general deterrence.”

And some cases are referred to that deal with the level of sentencing.  There is an observation that, “Money-laundering is treated as a serious offence.”  Of the cases referred to, perhaps the case of Choi Tse Hei(?) is the closest to the present case which involved the laundering of HK$1.1 million over six months to Fiji with another $750,000 also remitted.  In that case a starting point of 3 years was adopted for sums in excess of what we are dealing with today.

10.  Now, in this case the sum of money laundered is slightly over HK$1.1 million and that is relying on the exchange rates in the schedule that I have been given. The offences themselves were committed during April and May over a period, it appears, from around about 29 April to 9 May in terms of the deposited money but dating from March one deals with the setting up of the accounts.

11.  The scheme itself is quite sophisticated. It involves the recruitment of Taiwanese persons, housing them in Hong Kong and maintaining a network here to deal with the transfer of the money. It is obviously an offshoot of other criminal activities that were carrying on in other jurisdictions besides Hong Kong and clearly there is an international element in this case given where the money was coming from.

12.  I have 12 individual charges here but I think it is probably better in this case to see this as one transaction in terms of sentencing. I take an overall starting point, reduce that by one-third and then allocate that sentence to each of the 12 charges to be served concurrently.

13.  Having regard to the level of sentencing in other cases, and having regard to the fact that the defendant is a young man who was a small but essential cog in this general machinery of crime that was being conducted, I consider that the overall starting point for the whole criminality of a person in this defendant’s position should be 3 years’ imprisonment. I reduce that to 2 years’ imprisonment for the plea of guilty.

14.  I shall accordingly order that on charges 1 through to 12, the defendant serve 2 years’ imprisonment on each charge to be served concurrently, that is, a total of 2 years’ imprisonment.