A less than strenuous Saturday morning at the office allows me to catch up with newspaper articles not provided by our newspaper clippings service, which I dutifully trawl through each weekday. A headline from Wednesday's SCMP attracts my attention: "I knew listening devices breached suspect's privacy, ICAC man tells court".
What piqued my interest in this story is that a couple of people I know work for the ICAC, sometimes undercover (or "UC", as one of them is fond of putting it). For those who don't know, the Independent Commission Against Corruption is a law enforcement organisation with more extensive powers than the Hong Kong Police Force. Indeed, the ICAC was established in 1974 to root out dodgy policemen.
Since then, however, to the consternation of some, especially those who view with concern the activities, and accountability, of the New South Wales ICAC, the Hong Kong version has grown exponentially. It is now reported to have an annual budget of around US$110 million, much of which is consumed by its large staff. With more than 1,300 employees, it is estimated that the ICAC has one investigator for every 140 of the public servants it keeps tabs on. According to the same Australian newspaper, it spends nearly US$2.5 million a year on tip-offs from whistleblowers.
Cases currently or recently handled by the ICAC rather than by the police, as one might expect, include several disc jockeys accused of small-scale fraud at the local government broadcasting station (Radio Television Hong Kong – RTHK), as well as one real jockey, Australian Chris Munce. Munce was jailed earlier this year for two and a half years for gaining a material advantage from his work without the knowledge of his employer, a crime that seems to exist only in Hong Kong, largely through the good offices of the ICAC.
Back to Wednesday's story. Basically, it concerns a surveillance operation that was set up by the ICAC to smash a cigarette smuggling operation. One slight snag appears to be that, as the principal investigator assigned to the case, Kenny Tso Wai Yan, admitted, he was aware at the time that the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights were being breached. According to Kenny, this appears to be normal practice.
The court listened intently to James Bond-style accounts of "audio-visual bugging devices" installed in the office of one Ko Kit, the 36 year-old director of one of the companies alleged to be running the smuggling racket. Among the 160 video tapes taken at Ms Ko's office, one has undoubtedly been played more than the other 159.
This would be the one that shows "Kitty" lowering her trousers to her knees and engaging in what senior counsel coyly described as "an embarrassing act" – on her own. This seems to have come as a surprise to Kenny, who said he wasn't expecting any sex shows to be recorded – certainly not solo performances. He did, however, hint at the possibility of a more conventional coupling when he said that intelligence had suggested that Kitty was "very close" with the chairman of Nanyang Brothers Tobacco.
What piqued my interest in this story is that a couple of people I know work for the ICAC, sometimes undercover (or "UC", as one of them is fond of putting it). For those who don't know, the Independent Commission Against Corruption is a law enforcement organisation with more extensive powers than the Hong Kong Police Force. Indeed, the ICAC was established in 1974 to root out dodgy policemen.
Since then, however, to the consternation of some, especially those who view with concern the activities, and accountability, of the New South Wales ICAC, the Hong Kong version has grown exponentially. It is now reported to have an annual budget of around US$110 million, much of which is consumed by its large staff. With more than 1,300 employees, it is estimated that the ICAC has one investigator for every 140 of the public servants it keeps tabs on. According to the same Australian newspaper, it spends nearly US$2.5 million a year on tip-offs from whistleblowers.
Cases currently or recently handled by the ICAC rather than by the police, as one might expect, include several disc jockeys accused of small-scale fraud at the local government broadcasting station (Radio Television Hong Kong – RTHK), as well as one real jockey, Australian Chris Munce. Munce was jailed earlier this year for two and a half years for gaining a material advantage from his work without the knowledge of his employer, a crime that seems to exist only in Hong Kong, largely through the good offices of the ICAC.
Back to Wednesday's story. Basically, it concerns a surveillance operation that was set up by the ICAC to smash a cigarette smuggling operation. One slight snag appears to be that, as the principal investigator assigned to the case, Kenny Tso Wai Yan, admitted, he was aware at the time that the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights were being breached. According to Kenny, this appears to be normal practice.
The court listened intently to James Bond-style accounts of "audio-visual bugging devices" installed in the office of one Ko Kit, the 36 year-old director of one of the companies alleged to be running the smuggling racket. Among the 160 video tapes taken at Ms Ko's office, one has undoubtedly been played more than the other 159.
This would be the one that shows "Kitty" lowering her trousers to her knees and engaging in what senior counsel coyly described as "an embarrassing act" – on her own. This seems to have come as a surprise to Kenny, who said he wasn't expecting any sex shows to be recorded – certainly not solo performances. He did, however, hint at the possibility of a more conventional coupling when he said that intelligence had suggested that Kitty was "very close" with the chairman of Nanyang Brothers Tobacco.
So, what was it that got Kitty so hot that she needed, in Woody Allen's immortal words, to enjoy sex with the person she loved most? The clue is provided by senior counsel, who notes that the very same day Kitty had a talk with her solicitor, also captured on video, which was legally privileged. As the case of Johnson, Stokes and Master's erstwhile partner Ken Lim and his multi-talented protégé
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2 comments:
Verry interesting post...understated and quite scrumptious. Any follow up repercussions ?
The tale has a sad ending - a cautionary tale, Micky, for anyone tempted to put fame and fortune before good old Confucian values.
This is how I heard it from my man up north. Kitty thought she'd cash in on the gigantic accumulated need for release of half a billion adolescent only-children in the People's Republic. So, she set up her own website, got Visa, MasterCard and PayPal online, only for the bastards in Zhongnanhai, who are still wading through Mao Zedong's porno collection, to slap anti-porn spyware on Google China until at least they got back from their beach holiday at Beidaihe , by which time they reckon they'll be up for a new batch of what they like to call "unhealthy content".
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