Hong Kong Customs yesterday (November 12) raided a suspected illicit cigarette storage centre in Kwai Chung and seized about 240 000 suspected illicit cigarettes with an estimated market value of about $1.08 million and a duty potential of about $790,000. Five persons suspected to be connected with the case were arrested. Through intelligence analysis and after a thorough investigation, Customs discovered that a cigarette smuggling syndicate had been using hotel rooms as illi

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) today announced new enhancements to the Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect Pilot Scheme (Cross-boundary WMC) to foster closer communication between participating licensed corporations (Participating LCs) and their clients under the scheme (Note 1).          The SFC has set out in a circular the implementation details of the enhancements for client interaction, with key arrangements including: Participating LCs can now obtain

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has reprimanded and fined Tung Tai Securities Company Limited (Tung Tai) HK$900,000 for failures relating to unauthorised sales of client securities and transfers of client funds (Note 1). The SFC’s investigation found that between 6 September 2019 and 18 February 2020, Tung Tai, acting on instructions from a bogus email address similar to that of an overseas client, sold shares in the client’s account and transferred the sale proce

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) today (13 November) announced the launch of Ensemble TX , marking the commencement of the pilot phase of Project Ensemble.  This milestone represents a significant advancement in enabling real-value transactions involving tokenised deposits and digital assets within a controlled pilot environment. Ensemble TX builds upon the successful outcomes of the Ensemble Sandbox experimentation, which since August 2024 has allowed industry pionee

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced today (12 November) that Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) will become a strategic shareholder of CMU OmniClear Holdings Limited (CMU OmniClear Holdings), strengthening Hong Kong’s capital markets financial infrastructure and advancing the long-term development of Hong Kong’s fixed income and currencies (FIC) ecosystem. In October 2025, the Exchange Fund managed by the HKMA established CMU OmniClear Holdings with

The Insurance Authority (IA) has banned Mr Wong Ka Keung (Licence number: IE9049) from being an insurance intermediary for 30 years. Mr Wong conspired with at least nine other people to deceive his appointed authorized insurer of around HK$27 million by arranging patients suffering from critical illness to impersonate as policy holders and make false claims over a period of three years, pocketing about HK$13.5 million in the process. Furthermore, he produced three forged sick

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) today (3 November) unveiled “Fintech 2030”, a forward-looking strategy for driving Hong Kong’s fintech development, at the Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025. Marking the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong’s flagship fintech event, the Hong Kong FinTech Week 2025, co-organised by the HKMA and InvestHK, represented a significant milestone for Hong Kong’s fintech development. The event showcased transformative innovation and charted the direction fo

Hong Kong authorities has frozen assets worth HK$2.75 billion (US$354 million) linked to a criminal syndicate identified as the Prince Group run by sanctioned Chinese-Cambodian tycoon Chen Zhi. Britain and the United States last month sanctioned the Southeast Asia-based multinational network, which is accused of operating large-scale online "scam centers" that used trafficked workers to defraud victims around the world. Chen, 38, was indicted by a U.S. court on charges of wir

The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has banned Mr Cheung Ngai Yi, a former relevant individual of Hang Seng Bank, Limited (HSB), from re-entering the industry for life following his criminal conviction for stealing client assets (Note 1). Cheung was sentenced by the District Court on 31 March 2025 to 30 months’ imprisonment after his theft conviction (Note 2). The Court found that Cheung, who was then an account manager for a client of HSB, had misappropriated a total