STUART LAUstuart.lau@scmp.com
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 07 October, 2015, 12:00am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 07 October, 2015, 5:37am
Peter Duncan SC (left) helps former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen (right) fight ICAC allegations. Photos: Sam Tsang, K.Y. Cheng
The barrister helping former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen fight ICAC allegations was one of the anti-graft agency's first in-house counsel shortly after its inception in the 1970s.
A veteran of regulatory issues, Peter Duncan SC is now taking on his erstwhile employer, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, in the case of Hong Kong's highest-ranking official ever to face prosecution.
"[Duncan has] developed a substantial practice in criminal law with an emphasis on 'white collar' crime - in particular, cases arising from investigations of the ICAC, the Securities and Futures Commission and the commercial crime bureau of the Hong Kong police," his personal webpage says.
Duncan served the ICAC for almost a decade from 1974, before moving to Hongkong Land as group legal manager in 1983.
He became a barrister in 1998 and was appointed a senior counsel six years later, according to the webpage.
His current task representing a former Hong Kong leader is but the latest in a portfolio defending social notables and prosecuting on behalf of the government in high-profile cases.
In 2010, Duncan acted for Amina Bokhary, a niece of Court of Final Appeal judge Mr Justice Kemal Bokhary, who was convicted of assaulting police.
Last month, he helped former Executive Council member Barry Cheung Chun-yuen reduce a jail term to 160 hours of community service upon appeal for failing to settle salaries at the now-defunct Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange.
On occasions when he took the side of the government, Duncan advised the Department of Justice on claims that Franklin Lam Fan-keung, the second member to quit Exco in 2013 after Cheung, made use of insider information to sell two flats ahead of new stamp duties. Prosecutors later decided not to take action.
Last year, Duncan was the prosecutor who defeated the appeal of former development minister Mak Chai-kwong and a former assistant highways director in a rent-allowance scam.
The lead prosecutor in Tsang's case is deputy director of public prosecutions Alain Sham Chung-ping.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1864788/former-lawyer-icac-will-defend-donald-tsang-charges
