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A former Hong Kong primary school principal has been jailed for more than four years for leaking exam questions to a private tutorial centre run by his mistress and concealing his financial interest in the company. The District Court on Monday took Henry Kwok Chiu-kwan to task for abusing the trust placed in him as head of the government-subsidised Tak Sun School, saying he had effectively encouraged students to cheat at the expense of its reputation and the public’s confidence in the integrity of the examination system. The court held that the 52-year-old defendant deliberately and persistently committed the crimes for monetary gain, making his case more serious than the high-profile convictions of former government officials who failed to declare their conflicts of interest with business moguls. Kwok, who said he was now divorced, was slapped with four years and three months on a count of misconduct in public office and a conspiracy charge to commit the same offence. His mistress, 49-year-old Pang Wing-han, received three years for the same conspiracy offence. Kwok had run the 95-year-old Catholic boys’ primary school from 2013 until his arrest by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in June 2021. The trial heard that in 2017, Kwok gave Pang HK$420,000 (US$54,000) he borrowed from his mother to allow his lover to open the Diligence Learning Centre in the school’s vicinity in Jordan. He hid his interest in the private institution in four annual conflict-of-interest declaration forms submitted to the school’s incorporated management committee between 2017 and 2021. Kwok also regularly shared exam questions and answer keys with Pang, who was the centre’s director and majority shareholder, including those used to assess higher-grade pupils in their allocation of placements at government-funded secondary schools. The leakage prompted the Education Bureau to reject the exam results of the school’s Primary Five pupils in June 2021 on suspicion that 15 students who had taken classes at Pang’s tutorial centre might have seen the questions before the assessments. In an interview with ICAC investigators, Kwok confessed to having an affair with Pang after his relationship with his wife turned cold and distant. He acknowledged that he had placed himself in “a very difficult position”, but insisted that he had no stake in the tutorial centre and that he never believed the money he gave Pang amounted to a conflict of interest. In their written mitigation submissions, defence lawyers sought to liken the present case to high-profile precedents involving former leader Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and ex-chief secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan, arguing that they all involved a failure to perform a legal duty rather than a deliberate act to conceal. Both former officials had been jailed for failing to disclose their dealings with prominent businessmen, although Tsang had his conviction quashed following a successful appeal at the city’s top court. Hui, who was also convicted for accepting nearly HK$19.7 million in bribes and inducements, failed to overturn his 7½-year sentence. He completed his sentence in December 2019. Judge Adriana Noelle Tse Ching said the present case was more serious than the two earlier ones because Kwok had derived financial benefits from his deliberate and wilful transgressions. While acknowledging that Kwok was not in a position as high as Tsang had been, Tse pointed out the ex-principal nonetheless held the top post at the school and was privy to all of its confidential information. She further dismissed the defence’s attempt to draw comparisons with a star tutor’s case of leaking university entrance exam questions online, ruling that Kwok’s conduct constituted a gross breach of trust and displayed a high degree of premeditation and planning. Kwok’s legal team also pleaded for leniency by citing his good character and past contributions to the education sector and society. But Tse snubbed that argument and said what the defendant did was the polar opposite of a dedicated and passionate educator that his lawyers sought to portray. The judge said Kwok’s offences also made a “complete mockery” of the Chief Executive’s Award for Teaching Excellence that was given to him in 2011 for his contribution to moral and civic education. Misconduct in public office is punishable by up to seven years' imprisonment when a case is heard before the District Court.
