HKSAR v. WOO MEI-BO,MABLE

CACC 274/2014

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 274 OF 2014

(ON APPEAL FROM DCCC NO. 343 OF 2013)

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D E C I S I O N

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Hon Yuen JA:

1. The Applicant has applied for bail pending appeal. On 31 July 2014, she was found guilty by District Judge Johnny Chan of Charge 1, using a false instrument (exhibit P1), Charge 2, possessing a false instrument (exhibit P16) and Charge 3, using a copy of a false instrument (exhibit P3). She was sentenced to a total term of imprisonment of 6 years. She has applied for leave to appeal against conviction and sentence.

2. The court has an unfettered discretion in deciding whether to grant bail pending appeal.  In the case of a lengthy sentence, bail is only granted where it appears prima facie that the appeal is likely to be successful. 

3. The prosecution case was that the Applicant pretended to be a wealthy woman who was trying to interest investors in a purported scheme to finance railway construction on the mainland.  For that purpose, on 4 March 2011 she showed PW1, a middleman, two false bank statements (exhibits P1 and P3) purportedly issued by Bank of China and HSBC respectively.  The false documents showed that the Applicant had $19.8b and $39.2b respectively in the two accounts, which was not in fact the case.  These false documents were the subject of Charges 1 and 3.

4. Subsequently the Applicant purported to pull out of the scheme unless US$1m could be obtained to cover the cost of changing “her funds” to US dollars.  A potential investor PW2, in the belief (based on the false documents referred to above) that the Applicant was a wealthy person, lent her HK$7.8m.  The Applicant withdrew most of the funds and spent them on purchases.  

5. When the police searched the Applicant’s home on 26 July 2012, they found another false bank document in her bedroom.  This was exhibit P16, a letter dated 12 January 2011 which purported to be from HSBC and which stated that she had a 200m USD “credit balance in Hong Kong equivalent to date”.  This formed the subject of Charge 2.

6. The falsity of all these documents was agreed. The Applicant did not give evidence at trial.  She only called an expert in handwriting who testified that the two signatures appearing on exhibits P1 and P3 had not been signed by the Applicant. 

7. At trial, PW1 was cross-examined by counsel for the Applicant.  Whilst the trial judge did not accept everything PW1 said, he did find that he was truthful and reliable when he testified that the Applicant had shown him the false bank statements (exhibits P1 and P3) on 4 March 2011. The Applicant was duly convicted of these two charges as well as the charge pertaining to the false document found in the Applicant’s drawer at home. 

8. I have considered the perfected grounds of appeal against conviction and sentence. 

9. As far as the application for leave to appeal against conviction is concerned, suffice it to say that at this stage I am not satisfied that there are any reasonable prospects of success. The trial judge saw and heard PW1 and although he accepted that PW1’s evidence was not flawless, the judge was sure that this witness was telling the truth when he said the Applicant showed him the false bank statements (exhibits P1 and P3) the subject of Charges 1 and 3 on 4 March 2011.  These were the crucial documents.  Any discrepancy in the evidence or misunderstanding of the evidence as to which of two later meetings the Applicant attended, when some other documents were produced, does not seem to me (at this stage) to have affected the crux of the judge’s finding of fact as to what happened on 4 March 2011 when the material documents were shown to PW1.

10. Further, the judge was aware of the expert handwriting evidence that the documents had not been signed by the Applicant. Anyway it was not PW1’s evidence that she had signed them in front of him, his evidence being that the signatures were already there when P1 and P3 were shown to him, so the handwriting expert’s evidence did not detract at all from PW1’s credibility as a witness and as Judge said was consistent with it.  The fact that it was not the Applicant who had signed them also did not detract from the evidence that she had used them by showing them to PW1 in support of her alleged scheme to attract investors.

11. I then come to exhibit P16, the letter the subject of Charge 2.  At trial the defence was that she did not possess it.  On appeal it appears to be her argument that it was not proven that she knew or must have known that it was false. 

12. The letter was found in an unlocked drawer in the Applicant’s bedroom at her home, where the only other residents were her husband and two children. The letter was addressed to her and purported to refer to her being in credit to the tune of USD200m.  It was an admitted fact that that was not the true state of her bank account.  In fact she had less than HK$4,000 in it at the time.  In these circumstances it seems to me that the judge was entitled to find that “when a person only has less than $4,000 in his/her bank account on a certain date, he/she must know that a bank statement which purportedly states that he/she had a balance of US$200 million in that account on that date is false”. 

13. In my view the application for bail pending appeal is really without merit and must be dismissed.