There was a sense of déjà vu about the opening exchanges of the trial of Lily Chiang Lai Lei, whose case, together with those of her two co-defendants, finally came to court last week.
What might have been expected to have been a swift and robust defence of the charges against her, given her husband’s confidence in her innocence , expressed in this very blog (see the first comment), has instead given way to a litany of delaying tactics worthy of the Great Delayer, Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator , himself.
Nearly three and a half years after her arrest by the ever so slightly kinky ICAC, Lily has been seeking either a jury trial or a mistrial or a permanent postponement of proceedings, going through a fair old number of legal representatives in the process, it would seem.
Proceedings in her share fraud trial kicked off last Thursday with sensational revelations of a shady man in a baseball cap passing over to one of her co-accused, Shah Tahir Hussain, what appeared to be police files on Lily's former personal assistant, Ms Yip Yuk Chun, stating that she had been arrested for possession of cocaine.
Hussain's counsel, Kevin Egan, said in court that he believed the documents to be genuine, a belief that he was forced to reconsider the following day, when the court was told that the documents designed to discredit Ms Yip had been forged. Egan accepted this devastating piece of news with remarkable sangfroid, agreeing that the documents were forgeries, or, as he rather charmingly reformulated it, if one may trust the South China Morning Post, a "hoax", which made me chuckle.
"We want to lay to rest any suggestion of a cover up," Saint Kev of Oz intoned.
Which was jolly good of him, since no one, as far as I am aware, was suggesting that anyone was trying to cover anything up, rather that someone was trying to use forged documents to discredit a key witness.
After all these shenanigans, it was inevitable that the second week of the trial would start in an altogether more low key way, as Lily denied instructing her former PA to sell shares so she could pocket HK$340,000. Testifying under immunity from prosecution, Ms Yip had suggested otherwise.
Whether the court will believe Lily or her Girl Friday is anybody’s guess, but history may not be on Lily’s side, if a case also involving Egan is anything to go by. In his own 2006 trial for attempting to leak the identity of a suspect in the ICAC’s witness protection programme, judge Barnabas Fung Wah put his faith in a witness testifying against the Aussie under immunity, erstwhile SCMP chief law reporter Magdalene Chow.
On the other hand, the former Government prosecutor turned “ICAC Killer" – does that make him a gamekeeper turned poacher or the other way round? – boasts a pretty decent record of acquittals in cases brought by his North Point nemeses.
I can only echo what I said before - I look forward immensely to the next round in this long-running saga.
5 comments:
Typical rich kid syndrome.
Classic comment in the Post today. Asked if her alleged slush funds had been handed to her maid, Chiang responded, 'I have so many maids.'
I missed the maids comment. Rather good, though. Reminds me of crooner Jacky Cheung's wife, who managed to get her Filipina jailed for nicking some passport photos and an unopened letter from HSBC.
Speaking about Jacky, is he still on that Filipino maid blacklist? If I recall he went through them like I go through toilet paper.
Put it this way, if he was Indian, he'd have no left hand left.
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