The wife of a jailed Chinese property tycoon was yesterday convicted in Hong Kong of conspiracy to defraud and perverting the course of justice for manipulating share prices of her husband's property company.
Mo Yuk-ping (
District Court Judge Alan Raymond Wright found Mo guilty of two charges of conspiracy to defraud and a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. She was acquitted of one count of perverting the course of justice.
Mo was not immediately sentenced, although she faces a maximum penalty of seven years in prison for each charge.
She had pleaded innocent to all the charges and chose not to testify in court to defend herself.
The court heard earlier that Mo had instructed employees to open 43 accounts under the names of 12 people at various brokerages and use those accounts to trade in shares of Shanghai Land Holdings to keep its price above a certain level.
She also conspired with Chau to defraud the Bank of China in Hong Kong by "dishonestly creating a false or misleading appearance" with respect to the company's share price between March and May 2003.
The prosecution said that Mo and Chau had borrowed HK$1.78 billion (US$228 million) from the Bank of China to finance the acquisition of a firm that was later renamed Shanghai Land.
They needed to manipulate the company's share price because Chau pledged the shares as a guarantee for the loan and was required to pay the bank the difference between the shares' market value and the loan if the stock fell below a certain price.
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