Update | Denied: Rafael Hui staying behind bars as former Hong Kong No 2 loses appeal over HK$19.7 million bribe conviction
Fellow defendant Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong, former Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairman, to lodge final appeal with city’s top court. Hui and two others have not indicated if they will do so
All four defendants in the bribery case of former government No 2 Rafael Hui Si-yan lost their appeal against conviction on Tuesday.
Adam Kwok Kai-fai said his father, former Sun Hung Kai Properties co-chairman Thomas Kwok Ping-kwong, would lodge an appeal with the Court of Final Appeal within the 28-day period. A draft of the documents was already ready, he told reporters.
Hui and the two other defendants have not indicated whether they would lodge their final appeal with the city’s top court.
READ MORE: Hong Kong jury in Rafael Hui graft trial didn’t get right advice from judge, defence counsel alleges as appeal ends
“I am satisfied that the [trial] judge’s approach was a correct one,” appeal judge Mr Justice Wally Yeung Chun-kuen wrote in the 160-page judgment.
“Having regard to the responsibilities of Rafael Hui as chief secretary and the importance of the public objects which he served, the fact that Rafael Hui agreed to be or to remain favourably disposed to SHKP because SHKP had paid him very large sums of money was a gross departure from those responsibilities and was itself a serious misconduct in public office.”
He continued: “It will be a sad day for Hong Kong if senior public officers, such as Rafael Hui, could accept large sums of money and agreed to be favourably disposed towards their ‘paymasters’ in their public offices with impunity because the money or other advantages were paid before they assumed or after they left public office.”
In December 2014, Hui, who served as chief secretary from 2005 to 2007, was jailed for 7½ years for pocketing almost HK$19.7 million in bribes and inducements and committing misconduct in public office.
