International crime group offering US$20 million to kill Hong Kong man was ‘fantasy’, body-in-cement murder trial hears

Tsang Cheung-yan, one of three defendants, testifies group that placed a bounty on victim Cheung Man-li was a joke that ‘no one thought was true’

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Tsang Cheung-yan was the first of three defendants to testify at the body-in-cement murder trial in Hong Kong. Photo: Edward Wong

Published: 4:15pm, 10 May 2018Updated: 9:22pm, 10 May 2018

The first defendant to take the witness box in Hong Kong’s body-in-cement murder trial told the court on Thursday “no one believed” in an international crime group offering a bounty of US$20 million to kill the victim.

Tsang Cheung-yan told the High Court the group, which had an imaginary hit list including the Pope, then US president Barack Obama and other world leaders as well as the victim and Tsang himself, was just a fantasy crafted with friends to discuss crimes they would not dare to carry out.

“No one thought it was true,” Tsang, 28, said.

He also said he and another defendant had once decided to turn themselves in after fleeing to Taiwan, but were arrested before they had the chance.

Tsang, along with Keith Lau, 23, and Cheung Sin-hang, 26, have pleaded not guilty to murdering Cheung Man-li – known as Ah J – in their Tsuen Wan flat on March 4, 2016.

They pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful burial of a body.

Prosecutors earlier claimed someone attacked 28-year-old Ah J in Flat 9D of the DAN6 industrial building with chloroform, before Tsang injected him with alcohol. They then put the body in a home-made “concrete coffin”.