Forty-six-year-old Pang Tsz-hong had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud.

At Tuen Mun Court this morning, magistrate Raymond Wong Kwok-fai handed Pang the community service order having considered his guilty plea, remorse and full repayment made to the government.

The court heard that Pang submitted an application to the treasury for housing allowance under the Home Purchase Scheme (HPS) in relation to a property in Yuen Long co-owned by him and his mother, Tang, in January 2017.

Pang’s application was approved by the treasury and a monthly allowance of about HK$3,900 had been granted to him since June 2017.

However, the treasury found the correspondence address shown on Pang’s annual statement of his mortgage loan account was different from the Yuen Long address in October 2020.

The treasury suspected Pang might have violated the live-in requirement and asked him to provide a written confirmation of his compliance of the live-in requirement, copies of water and electricity bills.

Both the water electricity bills submitted by Pang were later found registered in the name of another person but Pang falsely claimed that the person was a distant relative who had once resided in the property and had already moved out.

The applications for change of the account name to Pang for water and electricity supply were also submitted.

The treasury then filed a corruption complaint to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), and investigations revealed Tang had rented out the property to different tenants between August 2016 and February 2021 while Pang resided in another premises.

The person Pang claimed to be his distant relative was in fact one of the tenants. As instructed by Pang, Tang also requested the tenant to change the registered user of water and electricity accounts to Pang in light of the Treasury's enquiry.

ICAC thanked customs and the treasury for their full assistance during investigations.