Hong Kong Leader Denies City's Reputation Undermined After Ex-Lawmaker’s Account Frozen

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam responded to questions about the city's reputation as a financial hub after HSBC froze the bank accounts of former pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui and his family.

“This is somebody who had lied to the courts of Hong Kong in order to seek a way to leave Hong Kong while under bail," said Lam.

HSBC Holdings Plc has once again found itself in the middle of the debate over Hong Kong’s political future after Ted Hui, who has fled into self-imposed exile, criticized the bank for freezing accounts he and his family held.

Hui, who has fled to the U.K. amid a police investigation in Hong Kong, said over the weekend that the British bank and other local lenders had frozen his and his family’s accounts in the Asian financial hub. His family was able to transfer out their savings after the accounts were “suddenly unfrozen,” he said in a Facebook post later. Local media reported on Monday that police had ordered HSBC to again block accounts belonging to Hui, his parents and his wife.

Hui called the incident “extremely serious” in one of his posts, as it impacted not just his family but the confidence of HSBC’s customers everywhere. China’s imposition of controversial new security measures has eroded faith in the city’s banking system, he wrote.

On Monday afternoon, Senior Superintendent Steve Li Kwai-wah of the Hong Kong Police Force’s National Security Department said the request to block accounts was based on a probe into Hui’s previous crowd-funding efforts. In an earlier statement that didn’t name Hui, the police said accounts related to a case were frozen as part of an investigation into money laundering and suspected violations of the city’s national security law, including “collusion” with foreign forces.

“We have to abide by the laws of the jurisdiction in which we operate,” a Hong Kong-based spokesperson for HSBC said. “While we are unable to comment on matters concerning specific account activity, we are disappointed to see the circumstances being misrepresented.”