Customs arrests wedding company director over alleged fraudulent practices
Motorists to save $14 in fuel with new Central Kowloon Route as govt proposes tunnel toll hikes
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South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong wedding firm boss arrested as closure leaves couples in lurch
Customs officers have arrested the owner of a Hong Kong wedding decoration company that closed suddenly leaving more than 100 engaged couples in dismay, with the firm revealed to have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts. 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.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
China-EU friction in spotlight, excessive dining austerity measures: SCMP daily highlights
Catch up on some of SCMP's biggest China stories of the day. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing China's central bank is launching a new connect programme with Hong Kong to facilitate cross-border payments – Beijing's latest move to open up its financial sector and also leverage the southern financial centre to better connect with the rest of the world. Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen Decades of overinvestment and state subsidies in China, weak domestic consumption, an addiction to manufacturing, crashing corporate profits, zombie companies that the state does not let die and a superpower trade war have, the EU believes, created a perfect storm. Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed again in the South China Sea, with Beijing saying its coastguard used a water cannon to expel a Philippine government vessel near Scarborough Shoal on Friday. China Coast Guard spokesman Liu Dejun said on Friday afternoon that Philippine vessel 3006 had 'ignored repeated warnings and insistently intruded' into Chinese waters near the strategic shoal.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong has been, and always will be, a very special Chinese city
So, Hong Kong is not going down the drain after all. What a relief! At least that's the latest reassessment of Stephen Roach, who is something of a big potato among the China commentariat. Some 16 months ago, the former Morgan Stanley, Asia boss seemed to have finally joined the 'death of Hong Kong' brigade, having declared that it is 'just another Chinese city' now. His claim – 'it pains me to say Hong Kong is over' – caused a bit of a shock because his views were usually considered moderate and measured. Actually, we are still 'just like any other big Chinese city', he concluded in a recent Financial Times op-ed, like 'Shenzhen with its technology, Guangzhou with its advanced manufacturing'. Hong Kong is 'special' only for its 'role as China's major international financial centre'. Well, Hong Kong had long been the main foreign exchange and investment funding source for communist China even under the British. Its functions may have expanded, but its key financial role remains. Not much has changed. Roach said he used three 'Hong Kong is over' metrics: worsening governance and collapsed autonomy; declining economy tied to the rest of the nation; and a victim caught in the US-China rivalry. It is the last criterion that Roach has changed his mind on, rather than the first two. Actually, he is a Johnny-come-lately. A while back, this newspaper, among others, was already pointing out how the city's capital market was roaring back, with its initial public offerings poised to regain the global top spot. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng Index has vastly outperformed the S&P 500 in the United States this year. Roach now admits: 'Hong Kong has benefited from the more powerful strain of financial decoupling between the US and China.
