Lau Lan-sheung v. The Queen
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CACC000098/1980 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF HONG KONG (Appellate Jurisdiction) CRIMINAL APPEAL No. 98 OF 1980 -----------------
----------------- Coram: Silke, J. in Court Date of Judgment: 7 March 1980 ----------------- JUDGMENT ----------------- CHIT FUND: MORE THAN ONE: NO EVIDENCE OF BENEFIT: SENTENCE 1. This is an appeal against sentence upon conviction in respect of five offences under the Chit Fund Business (Prohibition) Ordinance CAP 262. 2. Upon the appellant's plea of guilty the learned Magistrate imposed sentences of three months, five months, seven months, nine months and twelve months - all concurrent - respectively. 3. This is apparently a very rare charge. The learned and very experienced Magistrate confessed himself unfamiliar with it - a lack of familiarity which extended to both Mr. Reid who appears for the Crown in this appeal and Miss Filan Chua who appears for the appellant and, not least, to myself. 4. Mr. Reid was good enough to have enquiries made on the files in the Attorney General's Chambers and of Commercial Crime Branch. The net result of these was that in December 1978 there was a traceable case at Central Magistracy where a woman Chit fund offender was convicted of both running more than one Chit fund at the same time and of allowing nore than thirty participants in them. She received six months imprisonment. 5. Section 5 of the Ordinance allows Chit funds, but places restrictions upon the running of these local credit/loan schemes, and amongst those restrictions is the running of more than one fund at the same time. 6. The appellant here did this, and asked for seven other offences of a similar nature to be taken into consideration. 7. It was advanced to the learned trial Magistrate that, over all these twelve funds, a total sum of $117,000 was lost to contributories. 8. In the course of this appeal Mr. Reid very fairly conceded that there was no evidence that the appellant benefited in any way in respect of this sum. 9. The Probation report, which was sensibly called for by the learned trial Magistrate, suggested that the appellant was not the one who pocketed the missing money. It would seem that some of the persons who secured the funds of the Chit fund at the bimonthly auction failed to repay the whole amount when due, others failed to keep up their contributions. It cannot be said that this was a deliberate fraud perpetrated by the appellant. 10. I think the bald statement that $117,000 was lost in the course of the appellants dealings somewhat misled the learned trial Magistrate. 11. From Mr. Reid's research, in addition to the Central Magistracy case already referred to, other offences tried under the Ordinance, of which Mr. Reid could provide no details, were visited with a fine upon conviction. 12. Miss Chua has urged upon me that the appellant has already been harassed by the disappointed contributories even to the extent of a beating, that it was not a deliberate fraud on her part and that she has already served almost three months of her sentence. She is a fifty-one year old housewife. 13. Had the learned trial Magistrate been in possession of the information supplied to this Court it might well be that he would have taken a somewhat different view as to the gravity of these offences. 14. I might say, with respect, that his view that an immediate custodial sentence was called for, in the light of the multiplicity of offences here, is by no means incorrect. 15. However in all the circumstances I think the appellant to have learnt her lesson. It is to be hoped that the contributories have also learnt theirs. 16. I would quash the sentence passed upon the five offences and substitute therefor such sentence of imprisonment as would allow for the appellant's immediate release. 17. Before I leave this matter I would refer to one matter and that is the escalating scale of imprisonment imposed by the learned trial Magistrate. 18. The method of sentencing was frowned upon by the Court of Appeal in Law Tung Shing v. The Queen CA 658/79. While the basis for sentence in Law's case was somewhat different from that existing here, nevertheless the views of the Court of Appeal on this method should be borne in mind.
Representation: Miss F.L. Chua (D.L.A.) for appellant Mr. Reid for Crown |