Former assistant prosecutor general Kong Chi has been sentenced to 17 years in jail, despite pleading his innocence of all 89 corruption-related charges against him, according to multiple reports.
The charges included abuse of power, breach of judicial secrecy, bribery, improperly accessing data and forming a criminal syndicate. Kong was found guilty of most, though not the latter two.
The Court of Second Instance issued its verdict on Tuesday afternoon. It also ruled that the more than 14 million patacas worth of Kong’s assets, deemed of suspicious origin, will be confiscated.
[See more: The judicial year opens with a pledge to combat graft]
At the sentencing, court president Tong Hio Fong said that Kong’s behaviour had irreparably harmed Macao’s judicial institutions and hoped the case would serve as a deterrent to other public servants.
There were three other defendants in Kong’s case. The merchant couple Choi Sao Feng and Ng Wai Chu were respectively sentenced to 14 and 6 years for bribery. The third, the lawyer Kuan Hoi Lon, was acquitted of all charges.
Kong Chi’s case has been the most serious criminal case concerning a senior member of the Public Prosecutions Office since 2016, when prosecutor General Ho Chio Meng was charged with acts of forgery, fraud and money laundering. Ho was convicted and is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence.
