Legco panel votes down pan-democrats’ bid to probe CY Leung’s HK$50m deal with UGL
PUBLISHED : Friday, 17 October, 2014, 7:05pm
UPDATED : Friday, 17 October, 2014, 7:17pm
Leung Chun-ying denies evading taxes. Photo: SCMP Pictures
The Legislative Council’s house committee on Friday voted down two requests from the pan-democrats for an inquiry into business deals that Leung Chun-ying made with the Australian engineering firm UGL before he was elected Chief Executive in 2012.
The two motions were filed by Democratic Party’s Sin Chung-kai, and jointly by Civic Party duo Claudia Mo Man-ching and Dennis Kwok respectively.
Leung has faced fresh calls to resign from his role as Hong Kong’s leader since Fairfax Media last week revealed that on December 2, 2011 - months before Leung became chief executive but a week after his declaration to run for the post – Leung signed a GBP4 million (HK$50 million) deal as part of his former company’s GBP77.5 million sale to listed Australian engineering firm UGL.
In that deal, Leung agreed to “act as a referee and adviser” if asked.
Civic Party leader Alan Leong Kah-kit said a Legco probe is necessary because there is evidence that the agreement is still in effect nowadays.
“Does Leung bears allegiance to UGL or to the central government?” Leong asked.
Sin said the probe would make Leung come clean on the issue, as the chief executive has refused to face lawmakers’ grilling so far.
Critics questioned whether Leung is working for a commercial firm while serving as chief executive But the pro-government camp opposed the idea, saying that the pan-democrats were only trying to use the incident to kick Leung out of his office.
Federation of Trade Unions lawmaker Wong Kwok-hing said the pan-democrats support a probe to investigate whether they have received money from foreign forces first.
“There’s a whole book about the pan-democrat’s foreign donations, so we should first investigate on why the pan-democrats are receiving money from the Americans,” Wong said.
He was referring to leaked emails in August that suggested that Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s top aide, Mark Simon, had sent HK$500,000 each to pan-democratic lawmakers James To Kun-sun and Mo, but the pair reiterated they had never received money from Lai.
Starry Lee Wai-king, from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, also said: “We don’t want the Legco to turn into an Anti-Leung law court.”
Both motions were vetoed 22-38 by the pro-establishment camp.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1618614/legco-panel-votes-down-bid-probe-cy-leungs-hk50m-deal-ugl
