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A 35-year-old woman and nine men aged between 24 and 53 were today (July 27) given jail sentences ranging from 11.7 months to 74 months for contravening the Copyright Ordinance and the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance. Their sentences were enhanced by the District Court by 30% on each charge in pursuant to the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance. The 74-month sentence was the heaviest of its kind.
Following a year-long in-depth investigation, officers of the Customs Special Task Force and Financial Investigation Group on February 14, 2007, launched an anti-piracy operation codenamed "Touchdown" and smashed a piracy syndicate active in Kwun Tong.
The 10 defendants were key members of the syndicate, operating three pirated disc storage centres and three pirated disc retail outlets. In the operation, customs officers seized more than 33,000 pirated discs worth about $820,000. The woman and one of the men were found to have dealt with $23 million and $7 million respectively which represented proceeds of an indictable offence.
After the operation, Customs applied under the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance to freeze $9 million worth of assets suspected to be proceeds derived from the sales of pirated discs under the control of the syndicate. In accordance with today's court's verdicts, Customs will make an application for the forfeiture of the frozen assets.
Acting Group Head of the Special Task Force of Customs and Excise Department, Mr Chong Wai-ming, today stressed that copyright piracy was a serious offence and under the Copyright Ordinance, offenders would be liable to a maximum penalty of imprisonment for four years and a fine of $50,000 in respect of each infringing copy, and crime-related assets would be forfeited.
"Since the scheduling of the Copyright Ordinance under the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance in 2000, this is the fourth copyright piracy case in which the offenders were prosecuted for money laundering," he said.
"The sentence passed at the District Court is encouraging to the Hong Kong Customs for our anti-piracy work. It has conveyed a clear message that piracy is not accepted by the community at large and will lead to severe punishment."
Including today's case, the Customs has invoked the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance in taking prosecution action in nine cases related to infringement of intellectual property rights and the frozen assets amounting to $108 million.
Ends/Monday, July 27, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:26
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