Monday, June 9, 2014

A Gravy Situation

The trial of the century (so far) has opened, with former top civil servant, Raphael Hui, being charged with corruption, together with the Kwok weirdos.

Highlighted by David Perry, QC, the prosecutor, and also by the SCuM Post on Saturday, as evidence of Hui's living beyond his means and hence his likely guilt included Hui having purchased a HK$40k watch and having also once spent HK$34k on a dinner.

Whilst your correspondent wouldn't dream of spending (except on HH) HK$40k on something that looks the same and does the same job as its HK$300 counterpart, Mr. Perry, who must be new to Hong Kong, should take a look at the wrists of a random sample of Hong Kongers: HK$40k is at the bottom of the range of so-called luxury watches and the average Hong Konger would not look at a watch this cheap a second time after the requisite initial checking out of watch, shoes, handbag. and so on

And HK$34k for dinner - well, it's a lot of money, but we need more than the bald figure before we decide that a top civil servant, earning enough money even before bribes to be able to afford this, had to have been extravagant to splash out this much. Nicholini's is not cheap (OpenRice says HK$300 - 500 per head, but I think that is a minimum, before wine), but does this mean everyone who eats there is doing so on ill-gotten gains? If the dinner was for a special occasion (such as Hui's 60th birthday), and if guests were ordering what they fancied rather than the cheapest dishes, and wine other than the house red was flowing freely, then one could imagine a party of 20 (just two tables if in a Chinese restaurant) knocking up this bill.

Picking these as examples of extravagance does Perry's, and hence Hong Kong's, case against Hui and the Kwoks no good. I could understand Perry making this newbie mistake, but the SCuM Post should know better. Far more convincing as evidence of sleaze and corruption would be former Chief Execrable, Donald Tsang's, fulsome endorsement of Hui. I rest my case.