一位立法局議員在麥當勞餐廳被當眾毆打成傷，被視為是一九九七年以來最重大對法治挑戰的事件。過去香港一直被視為亞洲最自由、最有法治，因此也是生意人最樂於在此做生意的地方，同時在貪腐、政府效能上在亞洲受人尊敬，九七前，眾人最令人擔心的就是英國人所建立的法治是否能維持。
這位議員自認是此事件是和他的律師事務有關，他正在處理一項和澳門賭場大亨有關的商業上市官司。香港的三合會黑道和澳門、中國黑道關係密切。這種當眾公然威脅的行為，已侵蝕了香港的法治。
Hong Kong takes a hit as lawmaker is beaten
By Keith Bradsher The New York Times
Published: August 24, 2006
The anonymous letter arrived Thursday evening with a box-cutter blade.
It was addressed to one of the city’s best known lawmakers and litigators. And it held a chilling reminder of his beating at a McDonald’s restaurant on Sunday.
"You’re lucky you didn’t die this time, next time you won’t be so lucky - watch your step," the letter said.
The litigator, Albert Ho, who was just released from the hospital Thursday, blamed the attack on his legal work. This encompasses litigation in two industries bedeviled by organized crime: debt collection and gambling, where he is working on a lawsuit that is delaying a multi-billion dollar initial public offering by a Macao gambling company advised by Deutsche Bank. The threat Thursday could heighten concern not only about Ho, but also about the potential damage to Hong Kong’s reputation for settling disputes fairly in court, which has helped make it one of the world’s great financial centers.
The assault on Ho is the most public one against a high-profile litigator since the return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. "I see it as an open challenge to the rule of law," said Ronny Tong, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association who is now a Civic Party lawmaker.
Three men carrying wood batons and baseball caps pulled low to shadow their faces walked silently on Sunday afternoon into a McDonald’s restaurant in the heart of Hong Kong’s central business district. They approached Ho and said nothing. But in front of as many as 150 potential witnesses, they proceeded to strike him so many times and so hard that a baton broke. Leaving Ho to bleed, the trio fled the restaurant and have not been caught despite an extensive police search.
One of the biggest worries in the years leading up to the British return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 was that the rule of law would gradually be undermined here.
It is Hong Kong’s renown as a safe, stable place where contracts can be enforced and business disputes settled equitably in court that has turned this port into Asia’s biggest transportation hub and the financial capital of China. The city markets itself as standing at the center of Asia while trying at the same time to stand above the corruption and poor corporate governance endemic across the region.
The lingering question since the handover has been whether the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese gangs known as triads would start to exert more influence. The Chinese government has intervened here three times in the past nine years to impose its own legal rulings on democracy and immigration issues, while there have been hints of triad links in the attack on Ho.
The brazenness of the attack revived memories of the murder in late 2002 of Harry Lam, a real estate developer and stock market speculator. He was murdered while having breakfast at his favorite tea house. A man having breakfast at a table nearby walked over and shot Lam in the head, bent down to pick up and pocket the shell casing so as not to leave evidence behind and coolly walked past screaming bystanders and out of the teahouse, stopping on the way to put money on his table to pay for the breakfast.
To be sure, Hong Kong has always had a seamy side that contrasts with its towering skyscrapers topped with the names of global brands like Citigroup, HSBC and Bank of America. Periodic kidnappings for ransom of wealthy entrepreneurs and their children were a problem even under British rule and still prompt some executives to show up at the barbershop or dinner parties with up to a half-dozen bodyguards.
A mother and young child showed up at a small playground last year with no fewer than nine athletic bodyguards, packed into two large full-sized sport utility vehicles with a pair of bicyclists behind to pursue any assailants who might launch attacks from the cover of nearby hillsides.
"Compared to the rest of Asia, Hong Kong remains a world-class and law- abiding city," said Stephen Vickers, a top police intelligence official during British rule here who is now the president and chief executive of International Risk, a security consulting firm. "Having said that, we have long-entrenched triad societies, many of which have tentacles to Macao."
The attack on Ho is the most serious incident involving a prominent lawyer since 2003. That was when Mok Chiu Kuen, Ho’s predecessor in litigation against a Macao gambling tycoon, Stanley Ho, was also beaten up in an incident that police labeled as a possible robbery attempt. No arrests were made, Mok subsequently abandoned the litigation and the police did not tie the incident to Stanley Ho or anyone connected to him.
With advice from Deutsche Bank, Stanley Ho has been trying to organize an initial public offering of his main company, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau, to raise $2 billion to $4 billion. He has been stymied by lawsuits filed by his sister, Winnie Ho, advised by Mok and now by Albert Ho.
Stanley Ho said Wednesday night that it was "absolutely impossible" that his subordinates had anything to do with the attack on Albert Ho, who is not related. Stanley Ho has called repeatedly this week for the attackers to be brought to justice.
Albert Ho has said several times since the beating that he believed the attack was related to his legal work, but has never mentioned Stanley Ho and has noted that his work also involves the debt collection industry; Hong Kong triads, often working closely with Macao triads, are actively involved in this industry.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Albert and Stanley Ho have no known relatives in common, but they share the same Chinese character as their family name, prompting Stanley Ho to suggest late Wednesday that the two men may share a distant ancestor.
Triad-related violence may be returning to Macao as well, after nearly a decade of calm there, 40 miles, or 64 kilometers, across the mouth of the Pearl River from Hong Kong. The body of one of the best-known private operators of a VIP room at one of Stanley Ho’s casinos, Chao Yeuk-hong, was found last Friday in a car just across the border in mainland China.
Her throat had been slit and her husband, lying next to her, had died of multiple stab wounds.
The opening of a Sands Casino in Macao in 2004 has cut into Stanley Ho’s dominance of that city’s gambling market. He warned this month that up to a third of the private operators who control VIP rooms at his casinos were facing financial difficulties because of the competition.
Executives in the business community worry about the impact the attack on Albert Ho will have on Hong Kong’s role as a financial hub of Asia and as a city where Chinese companies go to do deals and raise money.
"Any beating of a public figure, particularly a lawmaker, undermines Hong Kong’s rule of law and freedom of speech," said David Webb, a corporate activist and a director of Hong Kong’s stock exchange. "If people aren’t able to comment freely on matters of public interest, including corporate governance, then there will be less transparency, and that hurts free markets."
Hong Kong faces a rival in Shanghai, which is seeking to build itself up as a venue for Chinese companies seeking to issue stock. Beijing recently began allowing initial public offerings in Shanghai after a long moratorium, although it remains unclear whether investors have enough confidence in the stock market there, where regulators have struggled to curb a range of share manipulation plots.
But Hong Kong has had its own difficulties this summer, of which the attack on Ho is only the most visible.
Ocean Grand Holdings, an aluminum and palladium processing company listed on the Hong Kong stock market that had long been a target of corporate governance advocates, has had a provisional liquidator appointed and ceased trading. The company revealed last month that it could not locate the financial controller of a large mainland China subsidiary and that $101 million had disappeared from its bank accounts.
But Albert Ho’s experiences stand out for their violence. For now, he remains defiant. Late Thursday night, standing in front of the thick steel front door of his apartment building after receiving the letter threat, Ho declared: "I don’t think I should succumb to pressure or fear just because I received such a letter."
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