The dangerous drugs in which you conspired to traffic were 18,692 grammes of cocaine hydrochloride. The estimated street value of that cocaine in Hong Kong at the time was $28,314,355.
The evidence before the jury, and upon which you were convicted, indicated that you were involved with a man known as ‘Mono’, who was a Colombian national, resident at the time in China. There is no evidence before the court as to how you came to know him or what you had agreed, if anything, prior to mid-August 2018, but you did not dispute the fact that you had at some stage sought to sponsor him to come to Hong Kong.
There is undisputed evidence that in mid-August 2018, you were involved in arranging the importation, clearance and onward transportation of a shipping container from Colombia.
There is evidence from Ochoa, that you knew that it contained dangerous drugs and that you knew exactly where those drugs were secreted within the shipping container. There is evidence that you knew what role Ochoa was to play and that you facilitated that role by purchasing tools for him to use on the container; that you selected a warehouse and negotiated a lease over the warehouse which was to house the container and that you recruited at least one other, Yip Wai-lun, to distance yourself to some extent from that lease.
There is no evidence before the court as to ECO Advance Limited which is the company name you used to facilitate the importation of the drugs. The only evidence we have are shipping documents, a letterhead, company stamp and business cards. Despite witnesses suggesting that they knew you and were friends of yours, none of them could speak to this company and they all believed you were involved in a car grooming, or I will call it, car valeting business and that would not account for you importing very large audio equipment.
You now say in mitigation that you were a salesperson earning $16,000 a month at the time of this offending which does not sit well with the business card suggesting you were a manager of ECO Advance.
You and you alone of the defendants before this court and upon the evidence before this court were involved in every step of the process of delivery once the container arrived on 20 August 2018.
Ochoa arrived with his wife on 18 August. You arranged their accommodation, met up with them on their arrival and kept in contact throughout by phone. That digital evidence showed the degree of your relationship with Mono; your direct involvement with the container, and that you were no one’s ‘gopher’ as Mr Boyton suggested in trial and seeks to maintain in mitigation. Quite the opposite, for it was you who was calming the nerves of both Mono and Ochoa whilst they were in China at the time the container was delayed for inspection and it was you who made the fateful decision to have Ochoa press on with his task on 27 August, when he had disclosed to you the hidden camera.
He was taking instructions from you against his better judgment. It was at that point that you disclosed the extent of your operation when you said that there were “five to six people” outside of the warehouse keeping an eye upon your illicit operation and watching out for police. Your knowledge of this illegal operation was far greater on the evidence than anyone else.
All of this had been the subject of observation by Customs and Excise and at the point that they saw sparks fly within the warehouse, they decided to close in.
You were by then sitting in a car immediately outside of the warehouse door. You suggested that officers had approached you with guns drawn, that you were dragged out of your car and pressed to the ground and handcuffed. You say you had said nothing on arrest and caution. Three officers gave evidence as to what you said, and as to the post-recording procedure which you took part in and which you signed as being correct. They were believed by this court on voir dire and by the jury in trial. It was your absolute right to test that evidence but it is not to your credit that your allegations were disbelieved.
You are now 35 years of age and a Hong Kong ID holder who was educated in England up to degree level and that means that you were the most educated of all of the participants of whom the court has heard. You have a business management and finance degree. You have several years of work experience, most of which have been fairly humble, working in food and beverage, and then sales and none of which supports a legitimate reason to be importing goods from Colombia.
I heard from your friend, Ms Poon, and your brother who are clearly good friends and care for you a great deal. I have no doubt you are a loving son and family member. I am sure that your family will be distressed by what is happening today. But you brought them to this, Mr Hui. You cannot blame others for the decisions you make.
I have obviously taken into account the fact that you are of good character but with an offence as serious as this, your good character has very little effect.
As was restated most recently by Macrae VP in HKSAR v Herry Jane Yusuph, CACC 93/2019:
“Given the appalling consequences which the proliferation of dangerous, particularly addictive, drugs has on families, communities, the workplace, indeed, on the whole fabric and functioning of society, the reason for a defendant’s involvement in the crime and his personal circumstances are of less importance than society’s duty to protect its citizens and the courts’ paramount function of ‘denunciation, deterrence and punishment’...”
For what I expect to be tactical reasons and no criticism of Mr Boyton, he has no instructions to advance more than the bare minimum of mitigation before the court today which is based upon the defence case in trial and which was disbelieved. This court must rely upon what it has heard in trial but it must be said that in any event very little can be said in mitigation which would affect the sentence that this court must pass although it is always comforting and encouraging to hear that, having committed a very serious crime against one’s own community, a defendant is remorseful. That is not the case here.
For trafficking in 18,692 grammes of cocaine under the guidelines set out in HKSAR v Abdallah Anwar Abbas [2009] 2 HKLRD 437, the starting point for sentence after trial attracts a sentence of 30 years for drugs weighing 15,000 grammes, after which the sentence is at the discretion of the court.
On the basis of the current guidelines, if you were a courier or storekeeper or someone playing a similar role, the starting point after trial would be in the order of 31 years and 3 months if the court were to apply the mathematical model applicable to the guideline sentence for trafficking in between 4,000 and 15,000 grammes of dangerous drugs.
I believe I am justified in taking this as a reference for the drugs which you have been found guilty of trafficking as they were just over 3 kilogrammes heavier and not, as is often the case nowadays, some 10 or 20 kilogrammes heavier. As the Court of Appeal has said, this is simply a guideline and for want of any other model is a starting point and no more.
A review of the principles of sentencing carried out in the case of HKSAR v Herry Jane Yusuph, CACC 93/2019, suggests that the current sentencing guidelines were originally designed to take into account the courier or the storekeeper. This was primarily because that was the role of the majority of those who come before the courts in Hong Kong. Those more involved and likely to make the greatest gains from drug trafficking take the least risks because they persuade others to front their operations and that is why they are the ones who are usually arrested and prosecuted.
But according to the evidence and the view of the jury, you were no courier or storekeeper, Mr Hui. If the court were to give you the benefit of the doubt, you were an integral part of at least an international trafficking operation in Hong Kong if not also in Colombia. If the court were to give you the benefit of the doubt, it may be that the operations in Hong Kong were being supervised by Mono in China.
I do not accept, just as the jury did not accept, that there is some third party called ‘A Gor’ who was controlling matters. I have no evidence of the role of Li Ka-kuen even though he has been named as the co-conspirator. There is no digital evidence to suggest that either man was involved or giving you instructions. The digital evidence suggests that you were the lynchpin in Hong Kong.
You arranged for the importation of the drugs. You arranged for the warehouse. You arranged for the delivery of the drugs to the warehouse. You provided the tools to do the job. You were present when it was carried out and you urged Ochoa to complete the job even though he was sure that the operation had been discovered. He did what you said and ignored the advice of his nephew in China. That dynamic and your reassurances over the phone to both Ochoa and Mono suggests you were in control in Hong Kong and you were the man making the on-the-ground decisions.
(Discussion re mobile phone)
You were not observed to be reverting to anyone else in Hong Kong whilst Mono appeared to be reverting to somebody in Colombia. The evidence indicates that you had a significant role. It may even be suggested you had the top role but this court does not know that for sure and so it will enhance the starting point for sentencing to show that your role was one of management but not top management, far higher though than a middleman and someone who made decisions and put them into effect through others. Someone who had access to the funds to carry out the operation and was the paymaster and it is irrelevant whether the funds you used were yours or not on that basis, someone who was prepared to put others in the line of fire such as Yip Wai-lun and Hu Mingjie. That is not to your credit.
I therefore consider the appropriate enhancement to be one of 4 years, even though I must consider totality because how else will those responsible for drug trafficking be suitably punished for their role. That will make a starting point of 35 years and 3 months.
There is however also the matter of the importation of these drugs in which you were involved. That is an aggravating factor for which you will receive, just as your co-defendants did, an additional sentence of 2 years. And that makes 37 years and 3 months.
You have chosen not to put any substantive mitigating factors before the court to reduce or distinguish your role or to distance yourself from the facts as presented at trial and you have shown no remorse. That is a matter of course entirely for you. You chose to put the prosecution to proof and that is your right. You chose to call a witness as to facts on your behalf as is your right. But in doing so, he put himself at risk by lying to the jury and you would have known that he would be lying when you asked him to suggest, as was your case, that you had no involvement with him or with the dangerous drugs prior to 27 August 2018, specifically that you did not know where the warehouse was when we had heard evidence, undisputed evidence, of your earlier presence at the warehouse and at the address and location being on your phone which you had accepted.
There was also the suggestion he did not know you at all but he delivered the tools to the warehouse which you had purchased and which you accept you had delivered. Mr Hu is lucky not to have been prejudiced in sentencing by that evidence but you put him at risk of it.
You chose to have a trial in this matter as of course is your right and there is no discount available therefore for a plea of guilty nor has the opportunity for any discount or reduction being advanced upon any other basis in mitigation.
Mr Hui, you will go to prison for 37 years and 3 months.