Australian reporter warned by CY Leung’s office not to publish ‘totally wrong’ story
PUBLISHED : Friday, 10 October, 2014, 5:20pm
UPDATED : Friday, 10 October, 2014, 5:20pm
Joyce Ng [email protected]
Protesters demand that Leung be investigated over his dealings with Australian firm UGL. NeoDemocrat lawmakers have filed a complaint with the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Photo: David Wong
One of the Australian journalists who broke the story on Leung Chun-ying’s controversial HK$50 million deal with Australian firm UGL has revealed that he received a warning from the chief executive’s office before the story was published.
In a letter dated October 7, Leung’s lawyer John Dalzell asked John Garnaut and Fairfax Media group counsel Gail Hambly to confirm by noon of October 8 that they “will not publish the intended article with those unfounded and libellous allegations”.
Fairfax Media runs the Sydney Morning Herald, which published the report on October 8.
In the letter, Dalzell said the allegations that the newspaper were planning to publish amounted to saying that the chief executive is “a corrupt public official, unethical, willing to engage in fraudulent activity at the public’s expense for his own gain, dishonest, and not a fit and proper person to hold public office”.
The newspaper report suggested that Leung had received HK$50 million from the Australian engineering firm UGL, six months before he became chief executive. UGL wanted to buy the insolvent property firm DTZ, of which Leung was a director. The agreement between Leung and UGL arose as a side deal from the acquisition.
The deal, made two days before Leung resigned from DTZ and the completion of the takeover, stipulated Leung would receive the money in two instalments in 2012 and 2013. UGL and Leung said the money was to prevent him from joining or forming a rival firm within two years.
But the deal also contained an “additional commitment” clause, by which Leung agreed to “[act] as a referee and an adviser from time to time” if asked. The clause raises questions about whether Leung could take up a paid advisory job for a commercial entity while serving as Hong Kong’s chief executive.
Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, which entered their thirteenth day on Friday, have focused much of their anger on Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. Photo: AFP
In the lawyer’s letter, Dalzell also dismissed the reporters' comparison between Leung’s situation and the case of former Chief Secretary Rafael Hui as “totally wrong” and “unjustified”. Hui, who was the second most important official in Hong Kong, is currently on trial in a bribery case involving property tycoons Thomas and Raymond Kwok.
The chief executive’s office confirmed issuance of the letter last night, saying the allegations in the Fairfax report were “very serious” and Leung had decided that “the matter had to be taken very seriously”.
Garnaut said he disclosed the lawyer’s letter to the Hong Kong media “in the interests of transparency”. He added that the letter was understandable from Leung’s point of view, but it would not affect his newspaper’s plans.
He declined to reveal the source of the documents. “The [Hong Kong] journalists ask whether this was a conspiracy emanating from Beijing, to give President Xi an excuse to rid [himself] of an under-performing Hong Kong chief executive. Beijing asks if this was revenge for ICAC’s raids on Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai. Perhaps it all balances out into something less sensational.”
Garnaut added “I really don’t want to lead or mislead, our sources deserve to be protected, and we haven’t really got anything more to say. So I’ll leave it at that.”
