Freedom of Speech | First session of Polytec lawsuit against columnist

Lei Kong (left) and Chao Chong Peng (right) pictured outside the court

The first trial session in the case opposing local Chinese newspaper Son Pou and the Polytec Asset Holdings Ltd (Polytec) was heard yesterday at the Court of First Instance.

The Polytec Group, developer of the canceled real estate project Pearl Horizon, sued Son Pou’s columnist Lei Kong (the first defendant) and the publisher of newspaper Chao Chong Peng (the second defendant).

The real estate company sued both defendants for alleged defamation originating in Lei Kong’s articles published on Son Pou about the Pearl Horizon issue.

In total, the Son Pou columnist wrote more than 25 articles, including eight feature stories, which featured comments on the Pearl Horizon case.

After Son Pou published Lei’s 27th Pearl Horizon story, the columnist received a lawsuit notice from the court.

Polytec’s accusation identifies eight defamatory articles written by Lei Kong. In these articles, Polytec found that Lei Keong’s expressions included the words “fraud” and “trap”, as well as other accusations and allegedly defamatory statements about the company. In particular, Lei depicted the Pearl Horizon contract with buyers as being “arbitrary”, a “trap”, and that it was a “suspected fraud”.

Both the prosecution and defense focused on these expressions. According to the first defendant, neither he nor his friends and family members benefited from the Pearl Horizon case.

He thus claimed to have written his articles without any conflict of interest. The same applied to the second defendant.

A representative lawyer of Polytec, former lawmaker Leonel Alves, argued that all the above expressions carried a pejorative tone and were in written in a way that could have led readers to think that Polytec had defrauded buyers or that Polytec was guilty of fraud.

During the questioning, Alves remarked that “the developer understands the articles and understands Chinese. We [the plaintiff] are very unhappy.”

Most of the concerned words were written in quotation marks.

However, according to Lei’s answers, he used the quotation marks for emphasis, or because he was quoting other sources.

Furthermore, the defendant said that Polytec has never issued a letter to the newspaper to clarify any of the articles.

Yesterday, the only witness, surnamed Chan, was present at the court to give his testimony. The witness is a Polytec employee who has been working in the company for more than 30 years.

According to the witness, Polytec always kept track of Lei’s articles on the company. However, it only decided to sue the columnist after having already read more than 20 of his articles.

Chan’s testimony served mainly to explain the development progress of the Pearl Horizon project.

The witness’s answers pointed out that the Pearl Horizon was delayed because the Macau government had delayed the issuing of a construction license.

“The society’s unawareness of the procedures became the stage for many assumptions and it stirred up quite some misunderstandings,” said Chan.

In 2011, Polytec started selling the houses, with sales lasting until May of 2013. Polytec promised buyers to complete the construction within 1,200 sunny days.

In one of his articles, Lei claimed that Polytec “obviously knew” that the project could not be completed before the land plot’s expiration date, which would be December 2015.

The prosecution expressed doubt over Chan’s explanation, saying that Polytec was still selling houses by May 2013, at which point it knew that it could not finish the project’s development before December 2015. 

However, Chan’s testimony pointed out that Polytec had expected the government would extend the land plot’s concession due to the company’s previous experience.

Polytec had planned to construct 18 buildings, each 47 storeys tall.

Lei also replied that he wrote the articles with the intention of triggering a discussion among readers, and not to make an accusation against Polytec. 

There was another area of dispute: according to Polytec’s witness, the company had issued a letter to Son Pou asking for the newspaper’s and Lei’s clarification regarding the articles.

The second defendant, Chao, said that the newspaper had indeed received a letter, although only after Polytec had already sued the newspaper. Hence, the newspaper opted to not make a clarification since the case had already entered judicial proceedings.

At the end of the session, the first defendant made a comment on the witness’s testimony. “[The witness’s words] are full of lies. [The witness] distorted the truth,” declared Lei. 

Lei Kong has been writing for newspapers, mainly as columnist, for more than 40 years. This year, Son Pou commemorates the 29th anniversary of its establishment. Lei has been writing on Son Pou since the first print of the newspaper. 

In 29 years, the newspaper was involved in a lawsuit only once before the current Polytec litigation. Lei also said that he has never been involved in a lawsuit before due to his articles.

Another session of the  trial has been arranged to take place on October 26th.