A crucial chapter is missing in the row kicked up by the Audit Commission's investigation into Discovery Bay's development into a residential estate rather than a holiday resort, as was intended by the Executive Council in 1976.
It is a story rooted in the cold war and the fear of the Soviet Union setting up shop on Lantau, where it could mount clandestine operations and listen in on China, its bitter ideological opponent.
Involved in the plot was a flamboyant entrepreneur, Edward Wong Wing-cheung, who conceived the resort idea and, at his prime, had business connections all over Southeast Asia and even in Panama. But his was a dream that few local banks were keen to support. The Moscow Narodny Bank was happy to grant him credit, however.
Indeed, since the bank started operating out of Singapore in 1971, it had extended loans on numerous dubious property deals all over Southeast Asia. But just as it was loose in granting credit, it was quick in calling it in when clients got into trouble, and foreclosing the properties pledged as collateral.
By the mid-1970s, governments in the region woke up to the possibility of the Soviet Union expanding its influence through the bank. So, when three employees of Mr Wong's Hong Kong Resort, the developer of Discovery Bay, petitioned the High Court to wind it up in 1977 because it had failed to pay their salaries, the alarm bells reportedly rang loudly in Beijing and London.
Ever alert to the fact that the city's fortunes were dependent on Beijing's goodwill, the colonial government here was highly sensitive to the possibility of Soviet economic or political intrusion. Soviet ships were subject to strict surveillance when they docked and their sailors were not allowed ashore.
