As of Wednesday afternoon, there will be no further criminal investigations into Hong Kong’s former Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) commissioner Timothy Tong, who has been under scrutiny since 2013 for his alleged lavish spending on food and gifts for mainland officials.
And no, the irony of an anti-corruption head being accused of corruption has not been lost on anyone.
Tong’s “lavish hospitality spending and expenses” were first identified by an audit report back in 2013, making Tong the first head of ICAC to be subjected to investigation in its 41 years of operation.
An independent review committee published an 81-page report providing details of 42 rule breaches during Tong’s five-years in office between 2007 and 2012.
The four-member committee, headed by Executive Council member Chow Chung-kong, looked into 899 events and receptions hosted by ICAC, HKD1.3 million of gifts, and 413 duty visits that cost a total of HKD12.6 million. They found that, of 206 meals Tong hosted and claimed back official entertainment, 77 exceeded the spending cap.
But when Tong appeared at a hearing in the Legislative Council that year, he strongly denied any wrong-doing. The former civil servant claimed that he thought such arrangements were “within the guidelines” until the report was published.
Yesterday, a spokesman for the graft-busting agency made the announcement that Tong is off the hook on the advice of the director of public prosecutions, the SCMP reports.
The justice department concluded that there is no convincing evidence to suggest that Tong tried to dishonestly hide the cost of entertaining the officials by keeping expensive wine and liquors separate from his accounts.
The department also found that there were “neither regulations nor internal rules within the ICAC prohibiting the consumption or purchase of hard liquor” at the time of the incident.
Following this, the department similarly ruled out criminal liability for Tong’s “overseas trips that included sightseeing” on the grounds that the activities were “mainly decided by the hosts” and that the ICAC only learnt the details “very shortly before or even during the visits.”
After the announcement was made on Wednesday, current ICAC commissioner Simon Peh told reporters that an internal disciplinary investigation into breaches by other ICAC members would be completed soon.
