Disgraced former Hong Kong minister Patrick Ho Chi-ping may have walked free from a New York jail, but the ex-official, who emerged looking noticeably slimmer, still faces one key step before regaining his full freedom after returning home on Wednesday: quarantine.
After spending seven hours in a testing centre near the Hong Kong International Airport, the 70-year-old was declared negative for Covid-19. As with any other returning resident, he will now observe 14-day’s isolation at home.
The ophthalmologist turned politician, who last year was sentenced to 36 months in jail and fined US$400,000 (HK$3.1 million) for his role in a multimillion-dollar bribery plot involving top African leaders, was deported from the United States after his release.
He had been in custody since November 2017 after being denied bail following his arrest.
Dressed in an oversized navy shirt, Ho left the AsiaWorld-Expo testing facility in a chauffeur-driven silver Honda sedan after receiving his results. Five people escorted Ho to the car, where two others awaited him. One covered him with an umbrella as he swiftly ducked into the vehicle, which then headed towards his flat on Garden Road in Central.
A pair of coaches were parked near the facility’s east wing to block photographers’ cameras as he exited via a gate not typically used by the general public. Local journalists resorted to observing through a gap in a wall some distance away.
Ho was “very tired” after spending the past day in the air, then hours more awaiting his coronavirus test results, a friend who had been in touch with him told the Post.
While members of his inner circle had earlier said Ho would board Cathay Pacific flight 831 and land on Tuesday night – reportedly due to a US immigration demand that he take a direct flight – that plan later changed.
At one point, Ho explicitly said he would catch the Cathay flight, a source familiar with the matter said. While it was not immediately clear what prompted Ho to take a different flight, the source said he ultimately flew from New York to Zurich. There, he boarded Swiss International Air Lines flight 138 to Hong Kong, crossing the city’s immigration checkpoint at about 8am on Wednesday.
Ho was released from Metropolitan Correctional Centre on Monday (US time).
The former secretary for home affairs, who later joined the private sector to, as US prosecutors argued, lobby for China, insisted he was “the first of the sacrificial lambs” caught up in the US-China trade war.
Ho was released before serving his full 36-month sentence, which included 16 months he spent behind bars before his conviction. His legal team had previously suggested he could get five months off for good behaviour.
Ho was Hong Kong’s home affairs chief from 2002 to 2007. After his civil service career, he became the deputy secretary general of a think tank funded by the Shanghai-based oil conglomerate CEFC China Energy, which has since been declared bankrupt.
In November 2017, he was arrested at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York, accused of offering US$2.9 million in bribes to Chadian President Idriss Déby, Senegalese diplomat Cheikh Gadio and Ugandan foreign minister Sam Kutesa.
In December 2018, a federal jury found him guilty on seven of eight counts of bribery and money-laundering charges connected to oil rights CEFC was seeking in Chad and Uganda.
During the trial, defendant-turned-witness Gadio, who served as the middleman between CEFC and Déby, testified that Ho offered US$2 million wrapped in gift boxes to the president during a visit to Chad in 2014.
Ho initially remained defiant in the face of the charges. Soon after his arrest, he said he was being used to “get to the big tiger”, and asked a friend to seek help from the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee. After being found guilty, he said he was “the first of the sacrificial lambs of such hostility”.
Later, he would weep in the courtroom at his sentencing hearing, apologising and saying he accepted “complete responsibility”.
Ho’s case shed light on China’s strategic expansion into Africa through private companies such as CEFC. It also raised eyebrows over UN governance, with three officials from the international body linked to the incident.
Dennis Lam Shun-chiu, an eye specialist who considers Ho a mentor and kept in touch with him while he was in jail, told the Post he was happy to see him return home, “and looked forward to meeting him after his quarantine”.
“Many of his students and mentees, including me, have all our hearts for him and we are so pleased to know that he has come back home safely. In the days and years ahead, we wish him all the best and that he be blessed with health, love, peace and happiness.”