Hong Kong’s ‘Mr and Mrs Ho’ marriage, gifts and assets spark probe into public flat status
- Investigation launched amid crackdown on cheats who lie about wealth to qualify for public housing and suspicions over assets of ‘Mr and Mrs Ho’
The couple, a 76-year-old Hong Kong man and a 43-year-old divorcee from across the border who wed about a month after meeting, attracted the attention of authorities after family bickering over the relationship and their financial affairs hit the headlines.
Rosanna Law Shuk-pui, the director of housing, on Friday said it would be “inappropriate” not to look into the high-profile pair’s finances on suspicion of surpassing the assets threshold for a public flat and potential ownership of property in mainland China.
“Whenever we have been tipped off on the matter, we have written to authorities on the mainland who are very cooperative,” Law told a radio programme.
“So far, nine government flats have been repossessed because we have established that their assets exceeded the limit, with the help of intelligence from the mainland.”
The couple have appeared on Hong Kong prime-time television and flaunted some of the luxury gifts Mr Ho gave Mrs Ho, including a Rolex watch and diamond ring said to have had cost a total of more than HK$200,000 (US$25,612).
The marriage of widower Ho to the younger woman upset his children and become hot gossip in the media.
It has also been reported that a HK$4.5 million joint account held by Mr Ho and his daughter was emptied when she learned she had a stepmother.
The investigation into the couple was launched as the Housing Department mounted a crackdown on cheats who lied about income and assets to get a public flat.
Law said that Mr Ho was not a registered tenant of the flat and should not be living there.
She added Mrs Ho was the tenant, but had only recently moved into the flat, so had not been included in the asset declaration drive which started in April.
Authorities sent out asset forms to 250,000 public housing tenants who have been living in their flats for a decade. About 88 per cent of forms have been returned.
Law said the department would next week write to tenants who were still to submit forms, remind them of the submission deadline and ask them to explain in writing the reasons for the delay and supply supporting documents.
She added, if that did not work, it would be assumed the tenants did not want to continue living in the flats, so their tenancies would be ended and the flats repossessed.
Law said that more than 1,200 tenants had been forced to return their flats to authorities since the assets investigation began.
Separately, Cleresa Wong Pie-yue, who leads the Housing Authority’s subsidised housing committee that advises the government on related policies, urged the department to follow up on households that voluntarily returned flats without making any declarations but which nevertheless involved serious breaches.
“They are obliged to surrender their flats. It is not a penalty. If the government has any evidence, it should pursue the matter,” Wong said at the authority’s annual special open meeting.
She added the government should consider tougher charges to prosecute households that had made significant false declarations, as well as criminalise certain actions breaching housing rules.
Wong also said the administration could lengthen the waiting time for tenants who had their tenancies terminated due to making false declarations and were seeking to reapply for a public rental home.
Under the current rule, they are only allowed to file an application again after five years.
Government statistics showed that the average waiting time for public flats over the past 12 months had gone down slightly by 0.1 years to 5.7 years.
The average waiting time for elderly single applicants also dropped by 0.2 years to 3.8 years.
