The verdict comes after the city’s judges strove to work out whether gaming companies’ staff ought to bear the same criminal responsibility as government workers under the penal code enforced in 1995.

Under article 336 of the existing penal code that spells out the definition of a civil servant, government workers include those hired by a company ‘running a business on an exclusive basis’.

However, the city’s top court delivered the ruling yesterday (5 March 2023), excluding all the six holders of gaming concessions from the organisations listed under the penal code.

According to a statement issued yesterday, the city’s lowest court of justice – the Court of First Instance – and the second-tier of the judiciary – the Court of Second Instance – failed to see eye to eye over the links between a croupier and a civil servant in two criminal cases involving theft of gaming chips and payouts.

Under the 1980s system that was superseded by a new one that laid the foundations for a liberation of the city’s gaming sector three years after the SAR was established, there were two different types of licences – one called ‘a concession’ and the other ‘a special permit’.

However, the Court of Final Appeal said that such a licensing mechanism became a thing of the past after new regulations came into force in 2001.

The top judges concluded after deliberations that a concession can only go to one company with exclusive access to a particular business, instead of multiple companies.

One of the major reforms introduced in 2001 was aimed at ending the traditional concession mode, as the then secretary for economy and finance – Francis Tam Pak-yuen – stressed at a Legislative Assembly session while presenting the bill to lawmakers, the top court said.

By Aries Un