Hong Kong wedding firm boss arrested as closure leaves couples in lurch
Acting assistant superintendent Ho Wai-sum of customs' unfair trade practice investigation division said officers arrested the 40-year-old male owner of a wedding decoration company based in San Po Kong on Friday after receiving 166 complaints about the firm allegedly wrongly accepting payments.
'We suspect that when the owner received prepaid sums, there were no reasonable reasons to believe the company could provide the services promised,' he said.
Last month, the suspected closure of Ps Wedding and Event Decoration, which had an office in San Po Kong, sparked 31 complaints to the Consumer Council involving more than HK$337,000 (US$43,200) in losses.
Ho revealed that the 166 complaints made to customs involved HK$1.9 million in total, with each contract for between HK$3,000 and HK$40,000.
The acting superintendent said preliminary investigations showed that the company, which had been operating for 13 years, owed money for rent and salaries before its abrupt closure.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
14 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Clarity on Hong Kong's water procurement scandal needed quickly
The Hong Kong government carries a heavy responsibility as a major procurer of goods and services. While there are well-established procurement guidelines to ensure value for public money, fair competition and accountability, irregularities may still occur, as in the latest suspected water procurement fraud . Officials must expeditiously find out what went wrong and learn from the episode. Advertisement The controversy came to light last Saturday when the Government Logistics Department announced it had 'partially terminated' a bottled water supply contract with Xin Ding Xin Trade Co Ltd, citing doubts over the company's ability to fulfil the deal, which covers the supply of 'XinLe' bottled water manufactured by Robust (Guangdong) Drinking Water's Guangzhou branch to government offices on Hong Kong Island and some outlying islands starting from the end of June for 36 months. Investigations showed the contracted firm had no business dealings with the Guangzhou-based company and instead sourced products from another supplier in Dongguan . The police arrested a man and a woman in connection with the case on Sunday and will investigate further together with the mainland authorities. The scandal has raised questions over the procurement process , including whether the bidders and products are subject to integrity and quality checks. It was found that the company had won three other chemical contracts; the authorities cancelled them following the incident. There are also queries as to why the water contract was awarded despite being considerably costlier. According to details published by the logistics department, the company would supply 1.88 million bottles of water at a price of HK$52.9 million (US$6.8 million), which translated to over HK$28 per bottle, whereas the winning tenders for government offices in Kowloon and the New Territories offered bottled water of other brands at HK$23.80 and HK$26 per bottle, respectively. Advertisement With some 30,000 bottles in question distributed to different districts before being impounded, the health concerns are understandable. The government has taken the right step to replace the products in the meantime, even though test results showed the drinking water from all suppliers complied with the safety standards.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's Jimmy Lai used false Beijing portrayal to urge West to act, court hears
Former Hong Kong media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying deliberately fabricated a negative image of Beijing to create an excuse for Western interference, prosecutors have said, accusing him of having a 'resolute' intent to press on with his efforts even after the national security law took effect five years ago. Advertisement West Kowloon Court on Tuesday resumed hearing the prosecution's closing remarks in the marathon national security trial of the Apple Daily founder, who is contesting three conspiracy counts of printing seditious publications and colluding with foreign forces. 'If we look at the totality of [Lai's] remarks as a whole, we can see … [he] tried to create a false impression [of the country] so that the external elements can punish the Chinese and Hong Kong governments,' he said. Advertisement
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
China's biotech hub Suzhou is thriving. Can it become the next Boston?
Could a city best known for its classical gardens and ancient canals emerge as China's answer to Boston – the global epicentre of biotechnology innovation? Advertisement Five years ago, the eastern city of Suzhou set forth a bold vision: to transform itself into the 'Pharma Valley of China' by 2030, benchmarking its ambitions directly against Greater Boston's world-leading life sciences ecosystem. The city in Jiangsu province, steeped in history and famous for its ancient water towns and picturesque gardens, hosts the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park – a hub for electronic information, mechanical manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI) , nanotechnology and biomedicine. With 3,800 biopharmaceutical companies already in town, the vision is to attract more top local and international pharmaceutical firms to set up their regional headquarters there by offering each company a subsidy of up to 60 million yuan (US$8.3 million). By 2030, Suzhou aims to establish itself as a major biopharmaceutical innovation hub, hosting more than 10,000 companies and generating an output value exceeding 1 trillion yuan (US$139 billion). Advertisement At the 2020 Suzhou Biomedical Industry Development Conference, the city's then Communist Party chief Lan Shaomin declared: 'We are the first in China to benchmark ourselves against the global biotechnology hub of Boston … aiming to establish biomedicine as a lasting industrial landmark in Suzhou.' To train drug innovation leaders of the future, Suzhou's Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) co-founded its Academy of Pharmacy with the Suzhou Industrial Park government in 2020 'to help Suzhou transform into a world-class biopharmaceutical and healthcare capital'.
