Village chief gets 22 years for huge coke hall on roof
Natalie Wong
Thursday, March 17, 2011

A New Territories village chief who stored a record 372 kilograms of cocaine at his home in exchange for HK$300,000 has been jailed for 22 years.

Pang Yuet-wan, 53, pleaded guilty in the High Cout to drug trafficking.

He said that under his deal with traffickers, he could have obtained HK$1.5 million from the drugs worth HK$337 million.

The bricks of highly pure cocaine, each weighing 1kg, were found in 26 boxes on the roof of Pang's three-story village house in Ping Che Road, Ta Kwu Leng, by Narcotics Bureau officers.

They were carrying out an investigation into a missing Dutch-Chinese man on April 25 last year.

The man is believed to have gone to the village to deal with the drugs.

Pang, the Tai Po Tin Village head who also claimed to be a salesman, told the court he was storing the boxes for an unidentified friend and was to have received HK$5,000 a kilogram.

Before he was arrested, he had been paid HK$300,000 in cash since last February.

Ten men and four women, aged 22 to 84, including Pang's 36-year-old wife Ling Yuen-sheung, 47-year-old sister Connie Pang Yuk-tai and 38-year-old brother Pang On-fat, were arrested in connection with the territory's largest cocaine seizure.

Pang's lawyer appealed for a lighter sentence in view of his client's guilty plea, age and the intention to take care of his elderly parents.

In sentencing, Justice Peter Line said the quantity of drugs was "enormous and rare," adding the amount far exceeded past guidelines for handing down a jail term.

But after taking into account the previously clean record of Pang, his contributions to the welfare of the village and considering that he was involved in drug storage instead of trafficking, Justice Line reduced his sentence by a third to 22 years.