To facilitate investigation, the ICAC-Police Joint Task Force took over the heart of the OTB Headquarters as the base to conduct a round-the-clock search for evidence. How was the investigation carried out? Just take an inside look!
To facilitate investigation, the ICAC-Police Joint Task Force took over the heart of the OTB Headquarters as the base to conduct a round-the-clock search for evidence. How was the investigation carried out? Just take an inside look!
The office shown here was where Mr Tony Kwok Man-wai, the then head of the task force, worked. Other investigators were stationed in the offices of other senior bank executives. The strength of the task force was unrivalled - the police and the ICAC each deployed 15 of their best men, the Department of Justice sent in three senior prosecutors and a dozen professional accountants employed by the Government all worked under the same roof to assist in the investigations. The elite group comprised six woman officers.
Why the OTB Headquarters was made the command centre of the investigation? To preserve the integrity of the evidence and to ensure bank documents, essential for the bank to resume operation, would not be damaged.
There was an enormous volume of extradition documents that needed to be copied. To meet the 45-day extradition deadline, the task force had to deploy all the photocopiers of the ICAC’s Operations Department and the Commercial Crime Bureau of the Police to do the photocopying. The exercise alone had taken four whole days to finish.
Documentary evidence for extraditing the chief conspirators totalled 12,000 pages. Since most of the OTB papers were in Chinese, the task force had to mobilise all ICAC translators - 20-odd in total - to translate all documents into English. The job took three whole days to finish. The sheer volume also gave the three magistrates responsible for certifying the authenticity of the documents a daunting task. Signing of the documents also took three whole days.
A dozen professional accountants were appointed by the Government to assist in the uncovering of suspicious accounting records. Among them are two twin brothers who came to like the financial investigation work so much that they both joined the ICAC after they completed their OTB assignment.
It was in this conference room where the task force interviewed bank staff about OTB accounts and other related bank transactions. A total of 613 witnesses were interviewed, among them 196 were identified as important or reliable witnesses.
The task force had searched 34 buildings and seized a total of 100 cabinets of documents. One can imagine what an arduous task it was for the investigators to sift through all the documents.
Documentary evidence was of paramount importance to bringing all suspects to justice. The task force had collated over 20,227 items of court evidence - certainly a hard piece of work in those days when the use of computer was not as common as today!