The Court of Second Instance (TSI) has decided to uphold the judgment made previously by the Court of First Instance (TJB) to sentence a then-investigator with the Labour Affairs Bureau to imprisonment on accusations of corruption.
The convicted person was sentenced to four years and six months in prison by the court, which was upheld by the appeal court.
The second-level court analyzed the evidence presented to both courts. It added that the base court had heard the statements given to the court by the chief suspect. It also heard statements from the witnesses, apart from viewing documents presented at the hearings.
The TSI saw that the base court had objectively analyzed all the evidence presented and had judged on the principle of evaluation of evidence itself by inner conviction.
“Actually, the suspect was calling into question the recognition of facts by the judge at the Court of First Instance, through which the suspect was [attempting to doubt] the judge’s freedom of conviction,” the TSI noted in a statement. “This is not permitted by law.”
The TSI added that the judge at the base court did not violate any principle or experiential rule. Therefore, the suspect could not have tried to overturn the conviction delivered by the court on the grounds that the judges were exercising their personal judgment.
The convicted person was on an inspection assignment when he discovered that a certain company was not paying its non-resident workers the MOP500 residential allowance required by the local law.
The company was also found to be assigning jobs to its non-resident workers outside their ambit of responsibilities under the law.
Later, the convicted person met with the company’s owner in Zhuhai to ask for MOP50,000 in bribe money so that the misconduct of the company would not be recorded. The owner refused the proposal and filed a complaint to the Commission Against Corruption.
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