Famous Chinese Shopping City Books

Cheung Chi Keung Wikipedia

Cheung Chi Keung AKA "the Big Spender" (died December 16, 1998) was a notorious Hong Kong gangster. He was an arms smuggler and wanted for murder. He is best known for pulling off many kidnappings of business tycoons and their family members, including Walter Kwok, chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties and Victor Li|Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, son of Li Ka Shing. However, these kidnappings were not reported to the Hong Kong Police.

Cheung's kidnappings and crime sprees purportedly caught the personal attention of then People's Republic of China|PRC President Jiang Zemin. Cheung was arrested in connection with the attempted kidnapping of Victor Li, tried and then executed in 1998 in Guangzhou. The trial in Guangzhou, for events that occurred in Hong Kong, engendered a crisis of faith the judicial independence of Hong Kong, an independence that is explicit in the Hong Kong Basic Law that had been created after the United Kingdom transferred sovereignty to the People's Republic of China. However, the Chinese Government argued that because the crimes were proven to be planned in China (albeit executed in Hong Kong), the PRC had the ability to exercise jurisdiction over the case.

At the time of his capture, Cheung was found to have been planning to kidnap another Hong Kong tycoon, Stanley Ho, then sole operator of casinos in Macau. A large amount of explosives and guns were found in a remote location in Hong Kong, which Cheung intended to use to carry out his plan. It was said that Cheung targeted Stanley Ho because he had lost most of the ransom money he received from the previous kidnappings in the Macau casinos that Ho operated.

Fictionalized accounts of Cheung Chi Keung's kidnapping of the wealthy have been made into movies:

• Operation Billionaires (english title) starring Simon Yam

• Big Spender (english title) starring Ray Lui Leung-Wai.

Category:Hong Kong people
Category:Criminals

zh:張子強

Last Modified:   2005-11-07