So ex-Chief Secretary Rafael Hui, Sun Hung Kai scion Thomas Kwok, SHK fixer Thomas Chan and the rather pitiful one whose name we keep forgetting head off for their first night in prison.
Isn’t this nice…
…the way the Correctional Services people put all four of them together in the van, so they won’t get lonely at this no doubt stressful time?
The full text of the judge’s statement yesterday suggests that the sentencing was scrupulously fair.
On the one hand, the judge said he realized that prison life for people of the four guilty men’s age would be harsh, and he conceded that they had all previously been of the 
utmost integrity – he had even read the nauseating letters attesting to the villains’ kindness to animals, blah blah blah. (If it were up to me, I would publicly shred those items unopened, and condemn this shoe-shining ethos as part of the bigger collusion-corruption culture in Hong Kong. The tycoon-owned Standard of course fills columns with accounts of Thomas Kwok’s philanthropy.)
On the other hand, the judge said (though not in these exact words) that this really counted for next to nothing because the four despicable fiends’ acts were evil and loathsome to the entire community, which by the way is getting seriously sick of this whole government-business cronyism garbage.
He shaved a bit off the maximum sentences, but not by enough to count as merciful. Assuming appeals fail and they are released after serving two-thirds of their sentences, the four will each probably endure somewhere between three and five years of abject daily misery: a narrow, hard bed; monotonous food; no privacy from the hordes of dimwits and losers that are your fellow inmates; noise; being regimented and ordered round by soulless guards; the disgusting smell of sweat during summer; and utter humiliation. Four years or five of it – who could tell the difference?
(So many members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been jailed for vandalism against fur traders that the group once rated various prison systems around the world. Hong Kong facilities got very high marks for the vegetarian menu option. Something tells me Rafael will not share the vegans’ enthusiasm.)
They will come out broken men. Perhaps.
Wouldn’t it be funny if things worked the other way round from usual, and born-again Christian Thomas Kwok lost his faith while behind bars? Unlike all those murderers and rapists who, once incarcerated, mysteriously become all lovey-dovey about Jesus, he could emerge after his sentence as a bitter convert to atheism. “I spent millions on building a Biblically accurate replica of Noah’s Ark, and what thanks do I get?”
I declare the both festive and four-day weekend open with tidings of joy, or at least mirth, courtesy of one of South China Morning Post cartoonist Harry’s ‘rejected’ recent works, filched from the Foreign Correspondents Club magazine…
Me name’s Duncan McCosh. You may know me from some Occupy MK videos displaying sadistic and gratuitous violence committed by “Asia’s Finest” against unarmed democracy activists.
I have just been promoted.
I shed tears for the tax money that has been spent both on uncovering these crimes and then again on prosecuting them
Rafael Hui even cheated on his tax payments !
A couple of the defendants (I forget which ones, but presumably one was Thomas Kwok himself – ardent giver of charity that he apparently is ) agreed to pay $12 million each towards the cost of the prosecution – but that was was just a drop in the ocean of the reported 1.2 billion this whole court case cost, not including the ICAC work beforehand
This whole affair is to me the most disgusting, horrible… words fail me … thing in my entire half life in Hong Kong
May the miscreants rot in their miserable cells and ponder not so much on their own crimes ( bad though they may be) but rather on the fact that they have openly revealed the disgusting , loathsome yellow-spotted underbelly of covert government – private sector collusion
If the pan-dems have half an honest heart over this festive season, let them propose a bill to make the maximum sentence for corruption 30 years imprisonment instead of the 7 years that is currently set .
Let that be a deterrent for future such public sector corruption (including CX junkets and the like )
The Hui case would not have seen the light of day had The Village Idiot been elected C.E. instead of C.Y.
Oneleg now fully understand the clamour for Leung to step down…to facilitate the further buggering of the local populace by property cartels and the tycoon-bureaucrat-pro-dem mafia.
And Merry X’mas…though there’s no such thing…to The Big Nose who keeps dolphins in a concentration camp in Aberdeen…how ironic.
sorry to burst your bubbles…this is what is going to happen to all 4 defendents (except Rafael Hui)
all goes to prison, all somehow bribed the guards to have single occupancy of their jail cells…all probably have all the comforts of home (sofa, regular bed and sheets, TV, satellite, all the electronic devices, maybe include mobile phones, laptops, etc…,) all the best foods of HK delivered to their jail cells, probably able to have other inmates made their beds for them. I suspect any contrabands will be available freely to these three, at least for Thomas Kwok…
three to five years blew right by…
How long (weeks, months…) before Raffie and Kwok get early release for ‘health reasons’ ? (never mind the other 2: they are neither well-connected nor mega rich).
I went to visit Long Hair in prison last summer. (Long Hair, who put in endless hours of community service after his conviction for calling Hui a crook and demonstrating in front of his house, should be feeling the schadenfreude today!)
Anyway, LH was a keen observer of the prison scene: he points out that the guards there are guys who couldn’t pass muster to get into the police force. Their main interest is getting in their years and getting the civil service pensions and having NO trouble at all on their records.
So during his 30 days in Lai Chi Kok, Long Hair was in his own cell and not allowed to mix with the others. Not because they thought he would be disruptive, but because nobody wanted to be the guard on duty if someone tried to kill or harm a Legislative Councillor.
My guess is that they’ll put this gang together and keep them apart from the rest of the prison population. Oh, they may get a perk or two (they let LH smoke one cigarette per day), but it will be rather difficult to give them much, as Correctional Services requires that everything you send into prison must be bought from a vetted store, and come from a permitted list of items. They even collect the items you bring, then swap them with the same item before it reaches the prisoner, so you can’t put booze in a shampoo bottle, etc.
From his account, and my observation, the Hong Kong correctional system is far kinder and gentler than a US prison. But I would not want to spend a Hong Kong summer without a/c, nor a Hong Kong winter without heat. Even with extra soap rations, or additional blanket privileges, Hui and Kwok will be utterly miserable.
@ Duncan McCosh, I suppose with your newly elated status you have an army of Wu Maos voting in the RTHK ‘Person of the Year’ poll. Seems the students have crept ahead. You might want to liaise with the Sleaze and Hypocrisy mob to really rig that poll.
Apparently the miscreants have been given individual cells. And poor Rafa might have to use legal aid for his appeal, according to his not naggy wife.
For his sake, hope they do better than Kwok’s lawyer who claimed last night they would appeal, and then claimed the judgement wholly appropriate. And today he is quoted as saying the judge was ‘lenient’. So what will the appeal be based on??
@ nulle
Probably that will be the case
But at least having to wear prison clothes for a season or two will take the miscreants down a big notch
PS: I wonder if HK prison internet is censored as much as Mainland China ? If so they cannot see what Hemlock is saying these days
Out on appeal in six week!
Merry Christmas to Hemmers – and to the posters who add to his posts. It’s been all around a jolly good year of Hemlock
You know – as the year ends – what about next year publishing the Hemlock “Book of the Year”? The best blog posts (all of them?) in one easy book, perfect for reading on the lavvy. I for one would put it under the Christmas Tree
what I said is because those in Correctional Services are still human, they gamble (or their spouses overspend, too much children college expenses, etc.), they rack up debts, then very susceptiable to bribes, especially the likes of Kwok brothers. You could easily bribe the correctional services officers en masse with 10 million or so…
every system have its backdoors…LH isn’t going to see drugs/contraband being sold when he is in the joint in HK…why do you think HK and China moving down in the international corruption list…