A former customer manager at China Construction Bank (Asia) Corporation Limited has been jailed for four years and ordered to repay about HK$3.7 million after admitting a conspiracy to accept an advantage as an agent. The District Court sentenced the 32-year-old following a case involving Tether cryptocurrency and documents presented as bank-backed security.
The prosecution case was that more than US$470,000 in Tether was received as a bribe in connection with the unauthorised certification of documents represented as standby letters of credit issued or approved by the bank. The documents were linked to insurance-related investment transactions.
The reported case centred on a digital platform operated by Israeli financial technology company Vesttoo Limited for insurance-linked securities transactions from April 2022 to July 2023. Investors using the platform were required to provide bank-issued standby letters of credit or bank-approved collateral letters as security.
Between April and June 2022, the prosecution said, the former manager conspired with a department head and others over documents represented as standby letters of credit issued or approved by China Construction Bank (Asia). The case also involved two collateral letters represented as issued by investors and endorsed by the bank. Together, the instruments purported to cover more than US$1.6 billion.
The defendant admitted the conspiracy-to-accept-an-advantage charge. A separate charge alleging conspiracy to use false documents was filed in court and not proceeded with. The court treated six years’ imprisonment as the starting point and reduced it to four years after taking the guilty plea into account.
The sentencing judge said the case’s international elements and its effect on Hong Kong’s banking and insurance sectors could damage the city’s reputation as a commercial and financial centre, weaken investor confidence and require the industry to spend more time and resources verifying documents. The Independent Commission Against Corruption said cryptocurrency had been used as an indirect way to receive bribes and make corruption harder to detect. It has applied for warrants concerning other people allegedly connected with the case.