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Leung To Face Prosecutor Investigation In Car Purchase Affair

by Mary Swire, Tax-News.com, Hong Kong

17 July 2003

Hong Kong Finance Secretary Antony Leung's controversial car purchase earlier this year- just six weeks before he raised a levy on luxury vehicles- continues to haunt him as prosecutors consider pressing charges.

Leung survived a no-confidence vote in May, and has attempted to atone for his mistake by donating twice the amount that he saved in car tax to charity. The Finance Secretary has aways maintained that his action was an honest oversight, and has repeatedly denied any wilful wrongdoing.

Speaking to reporters last week, Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung (no relation to Mr Leung) said that she has received a report on the Leung investigation, and revealed that the prosecution division is currently studying it. "The case of Secretary Leung is no different from other cases. We would treat it in the same manner," the Justice Secretary commented.

The official proceedings against Leung are not merely an embarrassment for the Finance Secretary, but for the whole Tung administration, which seems to be lurching from one crisis to another. After pledging for several weeks that the so-called Article 23 legislation would be pushed through unchanged, a 500,000-strong demonstration against the proposed legislation caused Tung to water down the anti-subversion bill. However, when Liberal Party chairman, James Tien, resigned in protest, Tung had to withdraw it completely. Confidence in a man seen by many as Beijing's puppet would appear to be at an all-time low.

Now the government finds itself once again between a rock and a hard place with the Leung case, and observers have suggested that failure to prosecute the Finance Minister may bring the Tung to the brink once more. As political scientist Ivan Choy of the City University of Hong Kong noted in an AP report: "If the government is going to decide on its own and if the final decision is to make no prosecution, it will trigger a huge anti-Tung crisis, so big that nothing could control the public anger."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/15/international0237EDT0441.DTL

 

 






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