A British
investigator once hired by scandal-hit pharmaceutical giant GSK in China was
sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for breaching privacy laws, a
Shanghai court said Friday.
Peter
Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng were hired to investigate the source
of a lurid sex tape of the China boss of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), shortly before
the British firm became embroiled in bribery allegations.
"Defendant
Peter William Humphrey who had committed the crime of illegally obtaining
citizens' personal information was sentenced by the court to two years and six
months in jail, with a fine of 200,000 yuan ($32,000) and will be expelled from
the country," a court official said, adding that his wife Yu would also be
jailed.
"Both
Humphrey and Yu Yingzeng said they regretted their actions and expressed their
apologies when making their final statements," court spokeswoman Tang
Liming added.
GSK is the
most high-profile target of wide-ranging Chinese inquiries into foreign
pharmaceutical firms, as Beijing also mounts probes into overseas companies in
sectors ranging from cars to baby milk.
But at no
point did prosecutors mention the British firm when questioning Humphrey or Yu
on Friday, according to transcripts posted online by the court.
The
couple's son, Harvey Humphrey, told AFP that he was "very sad" about
the verdict.
"I did
not expect the sentence to be that long. I thought they would be jailed but I
did not expect it would be for that long," he said.
An employee
of British drug firm
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) enters their
office headquarters in
Shanghai on
July 1, 2013 (AFP Photo/Peter Parks)
|
Information 'resold to clients'
Chinese
prosecutors accused the couple of illegally obtaining more than 200 pieces of
information on Chinese individuals, which they resold to clients.
"Generally
speaking... I don't dispute (the prosecutor's indictment)," Humphrey told
the Number One People's Intermediate Court in Shanghai, it said on a verified
microblog account.
It posted a
picture of Humphrey facing a judge wearing a dark suit while Yu wore a smart
red jacket, each of them with an arm gripped by a uniformed officer.
Foreign
media were not allowed into the courtroom.
The
sentence was announced late in the evening after a trial which lasted almost 12
hours. Yu's jail term was two years and she was fined 150,000 yuan.
The
spokeswoman also said that the two did not appeal in court.
"We
sold consulting services, which sometimes included personal information,"
Humphrey said according to the court, adding that he was unclear about the relevant
laws and details of particular cases.
"We
asked other companies to help us to obtain people's household registration
information, and we would pay a fee" for the service, he said.
He denied
an accusation that he had "tailed" clients, but said he may have sent
staff to "stand outside" an office to monitor it.
"The
services we supplied aim at reducing risks, especially risks in regard to fraud
and corruption," he added.
Yu said she
had "no dispute with the evidence provided by the prosecution," but
denied that she had sold personal data to other firms.
"We
gathered information not so we could sell it, but so we could write
reports," she said, adding that household registration data was obtained
to check on corruption.
Near-perfect conviction rate
The case
has raised concerns amongst foreign investors in China, who often hire
independent investigators to conduct due-diligence investigations into Chinese
companies.
Chinese
courts have a near-perfect conviction rate in criminal cases -- 99.93 percent
last year.
Chinese
authorities are investigating several foreign pharmaceutical firms over pricing
and other issues.
GSK has
been accused of systemic corruption, and in May its former China boss Mark
Reilly was charged with ordering employees to bribe hospitals, doctors and
health institutions to gain billions of dollars in revenue.
A Chinese
flag flies in front of the
Shanghai Intermediate Court on August 8,
2014 (AFP
Photo/Johannes Eisele)
|
Humphrey, a
former journalist and longtime China resident who founded an investigative
firm, ChinaWhys, was reportedly hired by GSK to look into the origin of a
covertly filmed video of Reilly and a girlfriend.
Humphrey's
wife worked as ChinaWhys' general manager.
The duo
have been paraded in prison suits by state broadcaster China Central Television
(CCTV), which earlier aired a televised "confession" by an unshaven
Humphrey.
China
originally said the couple's trial would be held in secret, but the Shanghai
court said last month it would hold "open" proceedings.
In practice
that has meant the delayed transcripts of the trial being posted on the
microblog account, which was being shown on a screen to reporters in a separate
room in the court building.
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