Tse Sui Luen Jewellery chairman, founder jailed for bribery

Tse Sui Luen Jewellery (International) Ltd. Chairman Tommy Tse was sentenced to five years in prison for tax fraud and charges related to bribes given to travel agents, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Judiciary Department said.

Judge Kevin Browne also sentenced company founder Tse Sui- luen, 72, Tommy Tse's father, to three years and three months on the same charges, Judiciary Department press officer Elizabeth Au said by phone today. An official at the Hong Kong-listed jewelry retailer who didn't give her name declined to comment.

The Tses were convicted last month for conspiring to steal, offering advantages to agents, defrauding Hong Kong's tax agency and false accounting, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said in a statement that also confirmed the sentences handed down today. The “illegal commissions” amounted to HK$170 million ($22 million), it said.

Deputy Chairman Peter Gerardus Van Weerdenburg was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison, said the ICAC, Hong Kong's anti-graft agency. Two other executives of unit Tse Sui Luen Jewellery Co. were also given jail terms, it said.

The statement said the sentenced executives were guilty of conspiring to offer bribes to employees of travel agencies between August 1996 and April 2003 in exchange for tour groups being taken to the gold retailer's showrooms.

(Published by Bloomberg 9, 2008)