A New York judge on Thursday rejected bail for a prominent Hong Kong businessman awaiting trial in a UN-linked bribery conspiracy, saying that evidence in a prosecution that could result in decades in prison was strong enough to make him want to flee.
US District Judge Katherine Forrest rejected a US$10 million bail package suggested by lawyers for former Hong Kong secretary for home affairs Patrick Ho (何志平), saying that she saw no conditions that would adequately ensure that the 68-year-old would not try to leave a country where he has no assets and scant ties.
Ho might want “to stand and fight” charges, but he also is facing “risks that would reasonably motivate him to flee,” she said.
Ho was arrested in November last year on charges he conspired in October 2014 to pay bribes to the president of Chad and the Ugandan foreign minister so a Chinese energy conglomerate could secure business advantages.
The conspiracy to bribe the minister was created in the halls of the UN in New York while the foreign minister of the African nation served as the president of the UN General Assembly, prosecutors have said.
Andrew Levander, one of Ho’s lawyers, said Ho believes it is “important to vindicate his name, even if it means spending the rest of his years in jail.”
Levander said his client has said in e-mails to a colleague that he would “rather die in jail than embarrass my family and sacrifice my reputation.”
“Flee at age 68? Where is he going to go?” Levander asked. “This man would not relish the life of a fugitive. This man wants to vindicate himself.”
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