Flower Lounge (19) -- In Due Process

It’s not the purpose of this book to dwell on the trial which landed me in jail, or to prove my innocence or otherwise. What’s the point? Anyone who has been trawled through the justice system extensively would always be tainted with suspicion in the eyes of some, and remain perpetually innocent to those who believe him to be guiltless from the onset. Furthermore, I know by now guilt is largely decided by judicial whims, luck, and, most critically, money. Facts and evidence are relatively secondary. Nonetheless, this seems a suitable juncture to introduce some kind of deferred prologue.

To do that, I need to go back briefly to the late 1990s.

After years of struggling with the pleasure of being my own boss, I sold my environmental engineering practice to a French multinational in 1996. The sales agreement required me to stay on as Managing Director of the team I had founded a decade ago. My office looked the same, the troubles which arrived at my In-Tray were similar, but I had become part of a giant multinational, a de facto state-owned-enterprise with French characteristics. Most importantly, I started to smile rather than fret on paydays. Paying out bonuses no longer felt like barbecuing my own leg to feed hardworking colleagues.

The new owner seemed obsessed with strategy formation and structural reorganisation to the exclusion of all else. For a giant corporation with more than two hundred thousand employees worldwide, it changed strategic outlook and organisational philosophy on a quarterly basis. Though the emperor was far away in Paris, his personal eunuchs and court jesters loved visiting Hong Kong, and I became their favourite host and reorganisation target. Coming from a humble professional setup, I soon felt exhausted, and started to daydream about retirement.

After making my intention known, many friends and relatives offered a similar opinion unsolicited: I was too young for retirement, and the best was yet to come, et cetera. They all assumed an optimistic future on my behalf with unfounded confidence. Yeah, sure. These well-meaning people didn’t know that branding a retirement early or late before letting life run its remaining course was rash, and short on logic. If I died the following year, retiring then, at forty-eight, would have been far too late. Otherwise, if I lived on till ninety-nine, then retiring at seventy could still be considered early. Plus I was still young enough to renew my life. What would be the point of retiring at an age too old for anything new? I had worked very hard, sometimes seven days a week, for years. Enough was enough. No more justifications needed. I had lost interest in appearing enthusiastic before bureaucratic clients and even more bureaucratic colleagues from afar. After careful contemplation and evaluation, I decided to retire ASAP.

Then karma intervened.

A leading operator of solid waste — more commonly known as garbage — facilities called me out of the blue, and invited me to join them as Director and General Manager. It was a joint venture between a bluechip British Group rooted in Hong Kong five generations ago, and a French giant — oui Monsieur, another giant français! — an intimate rival to the one I had been busy getting reorganised by. My background was wastewater treatment, not garbage, but waste is waste, same difference. Timing was so uncanny I simply followed the flow with trancelike curiosity. Leaving the other French early would incur a penalty, but I was happy to buy myself out of perpetual reorganisation. I emphasised my early retirement intention to my new employer, and committed to stay a minimum of three years, and ended up staying twice as long.

I’ll call my new employer — the joint venture — the Company with capital C. There’s no reason whatsoever to hide its identity, but I’m too old and impatient to seek clearance from corporate lawyers — a superfluous step which I might have to take, out of courtesy to my ex-employer, if I mention its name directly. In the corporate world this side of common sense, everyone seeks legal opinions on nearly everything. It’s the most acceptable way to disperse responsibility and postpone decision. The lawyers’ mandate in sizeable conglomerates is to turn business into a risk-free stalemate embalmed in legalese. The slightest uncertainties are transmogrified into daunting risks, overriding common sense, experience, judgement, instincts, and statistics. But it covered everyone’s backside, supposedly.

Unfortunately, no matter how well everyone’s backside is covered, shit still happens.

The Company’s British/Hong Kong shareholder was established in the early 19th century, steep in traditions, but not an Opium Trader (at least not directly) according to the Chairman, and my brief research.

John, the primary or First Defendant in our case, was the founding General Manager of the joint-venture — the Company. He had moved on to work for the French shareholder when I joined in 2002. Soon afterwards, he fell out with the French; most British managers in French companies do. I recruited him back to the Company to manage projects in Macau. He had a long and successful history of establishing our business presence there, with excellent market knowledge and personal connections.

The Company’s main business was in Hong Kong, with a stable and dreamily uneventful operation in Macau, established by John back in 1992 in joint venture with a local company. It had been doing an excellent job in keeping the streets of Macau clean, and was cruising profitably on autopilot by the time I came into the picture in 2002. Representation and liaison with the client — the Macau government — were in the good hands of the minority local partner who charged a handsome but not unreasonable service fee for managing contract-renewal once every few years. That was a classical partnership arrangement for multinationals in extra-territorial businesses. One never knows what one doesn’t know about local conditions. Why else would international corps with huge supporting bankers take on minority local partners otherwise?

Our local partner, a Macanese vintage enterprise, was owned by a prominent Chinese family, whose matriarch, the Chairperson of the company, was also President of Macau’s Legislative Council — the equivalent of parliament. It was a reputable setup, not a sleazy little middle-man. The company was named after a once prominent Portuguese family whose fortunes had dwindled eons ago. Its present-day scion retained only ten percent of the conglomerate, plus a smudge of vanity from being the company’s namesake. One of his few cushy chores was the overseeing of their joint venture with us. For those who have never been to Macau, the tiny Special Administrative Region, once a Portuguese colony thriving on casinos and round-the-clock massage parlours, had inherited the ambiance of a pirate anchorage, more akin to Porto than Vegas. Siesta was flexitime. Everyone snoozed whenever he wanted, and woke up to a higher GDP. So did we, happily, blearily, profitably.

When things are too smooth to be true, breezing along, be careful.

Some sage must have said that long before I was born, I’m sure. However, we were always bogged down by something more timelessly critical, such as Social Responsibility Workshops, weekly retro-reorganisation meetings, or stratégie plannings. In any event, staring into the bright blue sky all day looking for hidden thunder-bolts is bad for mental health.

Unfortunately, thunder does strike out of the blue once in a while.

One fine day, the Portuguese manager (I’ll call him Fernando here) was implicated in the pan-Macau corruption scandal. Over in Hong Kong, we were surprised. We didn’t know the word corruption existed in Macau. Everyone in Macau knew that one must tip the postmen to keep future mails coming. But it looked serious this time. Literally every who’s who in Macau’s incestuous business community was implicated. It would have been extraordinary, unthinkable, a huge loss of face to well-connected Fernando if he wasn’t. He had plenty of other businesses with the government besides ours.

Fernando was a charming gentleman who knew everyone in tiny Macau, from the waiters at the Mandarin Oriental Cafe to the Chief Executive of the Special Administration Region. His family had been there forever. His forebears probably got off the boat donning soggy perukes, looking damp and majestic in the late 16th century. Since Macau returned to China in 1999, the economy had boomed against gravity. In recent years, many antiquated Macau Portuguese, supported by language skills and comprador genes, have become useful bridges for outside parties seeking entry to the Macau market.

Macanese of Portuguese descent had over the centuries evolved into a coloniser-compradore hybrid. They looked Chinese, with barely noticeable stains from their Atlantic bloodline. Their DNA had long been localised through marital and extramarital procreations. But they remained peculiarly European to the locals. To outsiders, however, they were mysteriously Chinese. They often spoke in half sentences about their connections to a profitable mystery which they could not elaborate further — wink wink.

Fernando’s ancestral fortunes had diminished long ago, but he projected the impression that deep down, behind the facade of China’s Vegas, Macau was still swayed and shaped by people like him. Elegantly tall and slim, gently bulging at the waistline from good food, he spoke Cantonese, English and Portuguese, all perfectly. His flexible sense of amorality, acquired through tradition and upbringing, helped him navigate effortlessly between conflicting principles with universal neutrality. He was far from stupid, but privilege had greatly diminished his cerebral potentials.

To Fernando, life had always been good and easy, naturally smooth, until shit hit the fan. The Secretary for Transport and Public Works Mr. Ao Man Long — someone I had never had the misfortune to meet — was allegedly outlandishly corrupt. Oh dear, what a surprise.

These allegations had surfaced before, come and gone from the headlines, good for a snigger. After all, it was an open secret that every cog and flywheel of the Macanese mechanism required lubrication. But this time, the Westin Golf Club suddenly became all quiet. Many members had left town without a forwarding address. Perhaps they knew something Fernando didn’t? No matter, he remained cool, latino blasé. Why not? His boss was the President of the Legislative Council. Whoever has heard of a civil service minister taking bribe from the President of parliament? Furthermore, the magistrate and the Chief Executive were both Fernando’s golf buddies. Plus, be real, nobody — not a Portuguese gentleman anyway — had ever been jailed there for bribery since Governor Francisco Mascarenhas took office in 1623. The possibility of a serious crack down was ridiculous, too surreal to grasp, and Fernando’s imagination had been in siesta mode since birth. As a professional optimist, he focused on the bright side instead; booking at the Westin Golf Club had become easy. No need to phone ahead. Just walk right in and tee off.

Fernando ended up getting tried by his golf mate magistrate, who eventually sentenced him to ten years in jail in June 2008. One less competitor for tee time. Poor Fernando was one of only three non-family members of Mr. Ao to face the legal process in Macau’s historic show of justice. I felt very sorry for him because I liked him. But there wasn’t anything the Company, as extraterritorial business partner, could do. Plus I had finally retired in February that year, nearly one and a half years after I handed in my notice to the Chairman, to start the next phase of life which, unimaginable to me at the time, included imprisonment.

_____

A small business is vulnerable. Everything can be a matter of survival. To keep it going requires courage, gut feelings, gambling instinct, a pinch of stupidity, and a good measure of luck. A big corporation, on the other hand, is an ecosystem. The animals in it may thrive or expire, but the ecosystem continues on. Those at the top end of the food chain eat very well as long as their redundant nature remains out of focus. Since they have no line duties, appearing indispensable takes special talents, hence their handsome remunerations. French executives’ repertoire, probably something they learn from the École Polytechnique, is strategic planning and reorganisation. It’s a highly effective way to get everyone worry about their job, therefore the CEO’s pivotal importance, without changing anything. Quite a fascinating tactic, actually. Though frequent repetition can make anything tedious.

By the end of 2006, I decided it was time to quit. I informed my chairman of the board my intention to retire. He asked me to stay another year, and help recruit my successor. Finally, in February 2008, with a great retirement party, I withdrew from work work. In the following year, I worked on my first novel while totally unexpected events coalesced in the background.

A whole year after Fernando had been jailed, he suddenly overturned his previous confessions and filed a report with the Hong Kong ICAC — Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency — alleging that the Company and its executives had conspired with him in the Macau corruption scandal.

Why after all that time? Money, of course. Due to the unexpected situation in Macau, legal advisors of the Company advised against paying the balance of Fernando’s consultancy fees. I would have objected had I not retired. You pay someone money in instalments for a service. What he does with the money is none of your business. There’s no reason to withhold payment because he’s done something illegal. But I’m not a lawyer. Anyway, sitting in jail, feeling lonely, abandoned, even betrayed, the sudden emergence of a wickedly vindictive thought in Fernando’s head is understandable, at least imaginable.

Very early one morning in mid-2009, ICAC agents dragged me out of a boring dream to moonwalk through the due process of the law.

Hong Kong has adopted the doctrine that judicial independence and total unaccountability meant justice. The judiciary is an exclusive turf on which no one could interfere. Of course, not every player in the judiciary takes advantage of his sacrosanct independence. But judges are humans, most are anyway, and Homo sapiens tend to take prerogatives for granted, especially when they have been declared untouchable.

As an unwilling spectator, I saw judges and lawyers roaming the legal landscape unrestrained like lunar explorers with unlimited oxygen supply. In suspended animation, they stopped and gazed at anything they arbitrarily deemed worthy of examination with timeless patience, while getting generously paid.

Look, Your Honour, a piece of rock. To the untrained eye, it looks just like a million others littering the law book.

Mmm. Very interesting, Mr. Armstrong.

Should we examine the underside?

Is it appropriate? It may involve flipping it over. Would it contaminate the evidence. What does the rule book say?

There’s no precedent, Your Honour. Moon rocks are unique, and this one came from another jurisdiction.

Mmm. Let’s adjourn and give it due consideration then…

That’d be most prudent, Your Honour. Can someone mark this piece of rock?

Yes, of course. Thank you for the reminder Mr. Armstrong. Please mark the rock for now, while we contemplate the next course of action. Until then…

Co…ourt!

I found it kind of amusing at first, but soon grew tired of it.

When the ICAC invited me to ‘assist investigation’, I naively believed that having nothing to hide, I should simply cooperate fully. I stupidly spent hours chitchatting with the officers, giving them plenty of irrelevant material to selectively cut and paste into a condemning story. With hindsight and experience, I now would advise anyone in a similar situation to follow official advice and remain absolutely silent. Say nothing no matter how innocent you know or think you are. Suppress the tendency to explain your innocence. Don’t try to be helpful! Call a lawyer immediately. It’s most unfortunate, but that’s reality unless you like trouble. Normal cops don’t need to invent new cases to make a living. ICAC officers’ jobs and careers depend on prosecution, not illusive justice. Most of their contracts are renewable every two years or so.

One of my ineptitudes is that I’m a sucker for new experiences. Being arrested and interrogated was intriguing at first. But after a one night stare at the ceiling of an ICAC cell, I sobered up. The way they repeated certain questions gave away their intention to obfuscate the timeline and rearrange events (including publicly available information such as details of the ultra corrupt minister in Macau) by asking questions out of sequence and context, again and again, using different approaches. At that point, I called the Company, which arranged a lawyer immediately. The lawyer was Derek. He gave only one piece of advice: ‘Say nothing. Absolutely nothing.’ They then let me go. I found out later that John had been my next cell neighbour the previous night.

Nothing happened for many months after the initial invitation.

Just as we thought the whole thing would whimper away, John and I were charged for conspiracy to offer advantage in Macau. What? Even if that were true, Macau wasn’t, still isn’t, perhaps never will be, a part of Hong Kong. It was an entirely different jurisdiction under one country. I thought only thuggish empires with aircraft carriers could disregard jurisdiction boundaries. Plus by then, engendered by the sensational corruption scandal, it had been widely reported in the news that everyone in Macau had been bribing everyone else for centuries, suggesting that Macau’s playing field — which was none of Hong Kong’s business — was paradoxically level. If every bidder prepared his most competent bid, knowing that the winner would have to pay a percentage to the crooks, it would have been bribery for sure, but without procuring any advantage whatsoever.

No matter, the ICAC managed to construct a case against us, based on numerous inconsistent and self-contradictory claims by Fernando — the sole witness in this case. I was baffled, but arrogantly nonchalant. Even my online legal dictionary agreed: ‘Generally, there can be no conviction solely on the basis of what is said by an accomplice witness; there must be evidence from an unrelated source to corroborate the witness's testimony.’ In our case, there was practically nothing incriminating, zilch, besides the words of Fernando.

Fernando had previously given the investigators, lower and upper courts in Macau four contradicting testimonies, all of which claimed that he had acted alone in all dealings with the Macau government, therefore fundamentally different from what he was telling the Hong Kong court this time. Now, how do you explain that, buddy? Well, under cross-examination, he calmly and meekly told the judge he had been lying all along until this very moment. Being dishonest had been bothering him, laying a burden on his conscience. That’s why he finally decided to let the real truth come out. Legality buffs who love eye-openers can search for his unbelievably frank admission from the court’s archive.

Ha, just you wait. We had something even more convincing, more irrefutable, to categorically prove Fernando unreliable.

‘What about the letter you sent to the Company from prison, through a Macau lawyer, demanding money, or, as you promised in black and white, signed, sealed, delivered, that there’ll be trouble?’ My counsel asked Fernando in cross-examination, and presented the letter to the judge, requesting that it be admitted as an exhibit. John and I exchanged triumphant glee. ‘Furthermore, a few days after the Company replied in the negative, you called the Hong Kong ICAC to file a case against the defendants. Is that correct, Mr. Fernando?’

Bingo! I wanted to stand up and cheer.

Blackmailing in black and white is highly unusual, but Fernando liked to put murky things on proper record. During his trial in Macau, it was revealed that he did pass on a small fraction of his company’s Partner’s Fees to the corrupt minister in personal cheques. He had singlehandedly revolutionised the centuries-old ‘brown paper bag’ practice. Come to think of it, we could have used that as defence. For nobody with an IQ over 30 would have done that. John and I could have taken an IQ test to show we were far too clever to be an accomplice in Fernando’s dealings.

‘That’s correct,’ admitted Fernando, as if confessing infidelity to his priest. He had reportedly become a reborn Catholic in the past year, a remarkable transformation in the 21st century. ‘I asked for the money because I wished to pay back the Macau Government for my past wrong deeds.’ Seeking out redemption opportunities is nothing unusual for a devout Catholic. Someone in the gallery gasped. Someone else giggled. Cynics, obviously.

‘The timing was purely coincidental,’ he declared under oath.

The judge listened, studied the letter, admitted it as an exhibit, made notes, and nodded knowingly.

After the judge declared the day over at quarter to four as usual, John and I went for coffee with the legal team. We could hardly hide our elation. It had obviously been a decidedly good day. But cynical Derek was quick to pour ice over our optimism. ‘Judges don’t think like we do. The honourable judge might have found Fernando’s free confession commendable,’ he explained. ‘If I were a crooked ICAC agent, I would have coached the witness to admit to having lied, hoping to get the issue checked off rather than arguing against indisputable facts.’

I’ve heard that before, but was nonetheless shocked by him giving such a contemptuous assessment of the Judge’s intelligence in front of his colleagues.

‘What?’ John was dumbfounded.

‘Well, but ICAC agents aren’t crooked, in theory,’ he added with a lawyer smile.

John’s counsel, a vertically challenged Aussie who was reputably well-liked among ageing male white judges and lawyers for his endless facetious remarks, was sleazily client-friendly as always. He agreed with us that it had been a good session, and in any case we needed not worry because ‘a gweilo judge isn’t going to send a gweilo to jail.’

What?!

Talking about impertenence! What a shocking remark, albeit a welcome one under the circumstances. If what he said was true, it would be patently unacceptable. If what just came out of his mouth was nonsense, then he had downgraded himself from being cheaply facetious to offensive.

‘Are you saying the British judge won’t send John to jail because he’s a fellow Brit? What about me?’ I demanded clarification. There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Well, if the First Defendant is acquitted, the Second Defendant walks free too, haha!’ he winked. Very funny.

This went on for many months. Most days were drearily uneventful.

Then, finally, on Leap Day 2012, we were convicted. Derek was right. John’s expensive counsel was wrong, as usual.

Finally, the appeal notification…

* * *

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tortured by hope...