Former executive councillor Franklin Lam Fan-keung, who was at the vortex of a political farce that saw him falsely accused of profiting from insider information on flat sales, has hit back at critics and the media for dramatising his ordeal.
Lam broke his silence through an article published in Chinese-language daily yesterday, after the ICAC cleared him of wrongdoing last month following a nine-month investigation.
While claiming to be "the biggest victim" in the saga, he also thanked the ICAC for its professionalism. In the article, Lam criticised pan-democrats for abusing the graft-buster as a "political tool" to strike a blow against their adversaries.
"If a layman complains to the political parties about a suspected case of corruption, would the parties call a media conference and stage a political show to promote the case for the complainant, and then lead a group of people to report it to the ICAC?" he wrote, without naming anyone.
"I am not here to denounce anybody. And I do not expect those who complained about me to apologise. Because everyone has their own motives and ethical standards. [If I had wrongly accused others], I would have been the first one to come out and offer my apology."
He added: "From my point of view, as the biggest victim in the saga, there was zero political pressure from external influences on the ICAC during the investigation."
