Defence argues prosecution presented wrong documentation

At a court hearing about Suncity’s alleged crime syndicate, the defense raised concerns about a mistake in a document the prosecution presented to the court.

Four Judiciary Police (PJ) inspectors testified as witnesses. Two investigated the alleged underground bank operations and an inspector on the computer server of the then Suncity Group.

It was alleged that Alvin Chau, boss of the then Suncity Group, disguised gambler Zhou Yongjun’s side bets as his investments into the latter’s project. An inspector, surnamed Leong, was asked by a lawyer representing Chau why the police had identified the documents as related to Zhou’s alleged side bets, but not to a “Zhou Zhongge” as mentioned in a PJ report. The lawyer even said the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) typed “Zhou Zhongge”.

In reply, the testifying police inspector suspected it was a typo, with a redundant Chinese character being entered to the document, meaning the inspector hinted it was “Zhou Zhong” instead of “Zhou Zhongge”. The inspector stressed that when the PJ report was compiled, the police did not refer to MP documents.

The inspector said that when the police documents were made, the police cross-referenced data from their mainland counterparts, which showed that Zhou Yongjun had visited Macau and gambled during the concerned period. The activities were also recorded in the books of the then Suncity.

The defense argued Zhou had not engaged in side-betting with Chau. During his testimony, Chau denied the accusation and said it was Pang Kesun, Defendant No 19, who was taking side bets from Zhou, citing Zhou’s testimony. He said Zhou lost HKD320 million.

Chau also argued that figures and account owners on the “YTA” documents presented as evidence did not match the actual figures and names on the withdrawal. He said the large number of 40,000 side betting records and amounts were “completely unrecognizable,” with a 10,000-entry difference when compared with the data stored in Suncity’s general records.

He said he wanted to verify the authenticity of the evidence presented, while asking the prosecution and the witnesses if they had compared and contrasted the records.

In response to a police report that there were more than 50,000 records involving side betting from Suncity’s servers, Chau’s lawyer asked if the inspector had found any other information besides the excel sheet.

The inspector responded he had analyzed the monitoring data and compared the general records. The inspector was then asked if there could be typos or mistakes in the calculation as the data had been manually inputted. In response, he believed that the odds were small given the large amounts.

The inspector also admitted that the compilation of certain evidential documents relied on transcripts taken by the mainland police, and he had not revisited the voice recordings which came from the wire-tapping of Chau’s phone.

On the evidence allegedly proving Chau’s control over side-betting companies, the inspector referred to documents showing Chau’s ownership of “self-operated” side-betting companies and his “main camp.”