The first Chief Executive to be jailed, the Honourable Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, GBM, was holidaying in Europe yesterday when his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal. The top court cleared Tsang on a technicality. The trial judge had erred, it said, failing to adequately direct the jury. The former CE’s savings have been wiped out largely by legal costs somewhere north of $30 million. He has faced the shame of eight months in a maximum-security prison, his one-year sentence cut because of holidays and good behaviour.
The quashing of his conviction for misconduct in public office means Tsang will keep his pension and knighthood and may be able to recoup some legal costs. He was known as “Greedy Tsang” because of his acceptances of favours from tycoons such as trips on private jets and super-yachts. Former Chief Secretary Anson Chan defended him, saying these were “petty” matters. A Chief Executive had to be close to the biggest businessmen in town.
Tsang, now 74, was the top official of the SAR from 2005 to 2012, stepping down in June of that year under the cloud of an ICAC investigation. At his trial the prosecution said his acceptance without disclosure of a three-storey luxurious penthouse in Shenzhen as a retirement home from businessman Bill Wong Cho-bau amounted to misconduct in public office. Tsang’s expensive silks led by QC Clare Montgomery argued he had committed to pay market rent and there was no need to disclose the arrangement.
Also known as “Bow-tie Tsang”, he is the eldest of a family sired by a police officer. He has four brothers and a sister. One brother became Police Commissioner and his sister chairwoman of Standard Chartered Hong Kong. Tsang married Selina Pou Siu-mei in 1969 and they have two sons. He is a devout Catholic who goes to mass every morning and a fan of koi, kept in a $300,000 pool at Government House.
His spell as Chief Executive was chequered. Critics attacked him for failing to tackle air pollution seriously or the housing crisis. His legacy today is the world’s highest priced residential housing market, which has made owning a home an impossible dream for most Hong Kong people. Tsang’s finest hour may have been when he was Financial Secretary. He joined forces with Joseph Yam of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to see off an attempt by hedge funds led by George Soros to break the Hong Kong dollar peg to the US dollar during the 1998 financial crisis. Hong Kong’s last Governor Chris Patten described Tsang as one of the best civil servants he had ever known and arranged for Prince Charles to knight Tsang just before the Hand-over in 1997.
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