D19 Wong Chi-fung
154. D19 is now aged 28. He has a number of criminal records between 2016 and 2023.
155. Mr. Marco Li, together with Ms. Toni Chan, counsel for D19 submitted that D19’s role in the Scheme could be distinguished from other defendants who played a more leading role. Counsel submitted that D19 should be placed in the category of “active participant” for the purpose of sentencing. We accepted that to be the case.
156. We received mitigation letters from the mother of D19, clergy and a former teacher of D19. They all asked for a lenient sentence be passed on D19.
157. We took into consideration the role played by D19 as revealed in the Summary of Facts. In our judgment, the Summary of Facts revealed that D19 was an active participant in the Scheme. He agreed that if he were successfully elected into the LegCo, he would veto the Budgets indiscriminately with others in pursuant to the Scheme.
158. Based on the role of D19 in the Scheme, 7 years (84 months) would be adopted as the starting point. Given the guilty plea of D19, a full one-third discount would be given. It was not raised in his mitigation that D19 committed the offence under a mistake of the law, hence we gave no reduction under this head.
159. Given the criminal records of D19, we did not consider him to be a person of good character.
160. We considered the chronology of D19’s convictions in WKCC 2289/2020, ESCC 2097/2020, DCCC 876,885,890 & 892/2020 and HCMP 585/2020. In our judgment, these matters had no direct relationship to the present case. It should be noted that D19 committed the present offence while he was on court bail. We did not think we should give further reduction because D19 could not have all the offences sentenced in the same proceedings. The sentence we passed on D19 also would not have a crushing effect on him.
161. In conclusion, for the offence D19 stands convicted, he is sentenced to 4 years and 8 months’ (56 months) imprisonment.
