Fung Kin-hung, 40, earlier pleaded not guilty to four counts of obtaining access to computer with a view to dishonest gain. In Kowloon City Magistrates' Courts on Thursday, judge Frances Leung Nga-yan convicted Fung of all four charges and adjourned the case to July 14 for sentencing.

The court heard that Fung upgraded his user account in the e-system of the University Grants Committee to an administrator account on October 18, 2017. He also viewed the proposals of other competitors and changed their passcodes without authorization between November 22, 2017 and February 22, 2018.

The defense summoned a psychiatrist to testify and said Fung repeatedly logged into the system as he suffered from depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Yet, Leung pointed out that the information downloaded by Fung was related to his work and disagreed with the defense that Fung repeatedly logged into the system aimlessly. Leung also believed Fung's crimes had nothing to do with any disorder.

Leung also dismissed the defense's explanation that Fung committed that crimes out if curiosity. She went on to say that Fung downloaded a great number of proposals from the system and changed the information and passcodes of other user accounts to avoid alerting the real administrators.

She noted that Fung upgraded his user account because he knew he didn't have clearance to access classified information.

The court has to protect the privacy of others who were involved in this case and Fung's crimes call for imprisonment, according to Leung.

However, given Fung's academic achievement and background, the court will first retrieve a community service report for him before handing down a sentence.