Mortgage suit homes in on QC

Retired queen's counsel Kenneth Kwok Hing-wai is being sued by Shanghai Commercial Bank for failing to repay a mortgage for a residential flat in Mid-Levels.

The bank filed a writ in the high court on Monday against the 73-year-old, who is a former recorder there, and demanded he hand over the flat and parking space in Park View Court, Lyttelton Road, as well as repay the unpaid mortgage and interest. The amount of money involved was not listed.

The flat is believed to be 1,308 square feet with three rooms on the lower floors of Block A.

Another flat of the same size and facing the same direction sold for HK$10.1 million in 2007.

The latest transaction involved a 1,266-square-foot unit facing the same way as Kwok's, which sold for more than $23.3 million.

Both the flat and parking space were registered in the Land Registry and to the bank by way of mortgage on March 31, 2009. Kwok no longer appears on the Bar Association list, suggesting he is no longer in practice and understood to have retired.

A press release by the judiciary in 2003, when it reappointed Kwok as a recorder of the court of first instance, said the barrister graduated from the University of Hong Kongin 1972 and was called to the Bar in 1974.

He was appointed a queen's counsel in 1993 and a recorder at the court in 1997.