Hong Kong Billionaire Released From Jail and Heads Home for Dim Sum

(Bloomberg) -- What’s the first thing a Hong Kong billionaire does when he’s released from jail? Order dim sum, of course.

“The thing I want to do the most? Go home,” 67-year-old Thomas Kwok said outside Stanley Prison after serving just over three years of his five-year sentence. He was granted an early release for good behavior. “I have already ordered dim sum.”

The former co-chairman of Hong Kong’s largest developer, Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., Kwok was found guilty in 2014 of conspiring to bribe the city’s former No. 2 official Rafael Hui in exchange for favorable treatment for the company.

Kwok has a net worth of $12.4 billion, making him Hong Kong’s fifth-richest person alongside his younger brother Raymond Kwok, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.

He told reporters he has no immediate plan to return to work and will take time to rest. “There were a lot of changes in the company in the four years that I was absent,” he said outside the prison, where he was met by his brother, son Adam and daughter Noelle.

“I need to catch up with the changes in the world and Hong Kong. I would like to visit other countries to study how to incorporate technology into the business,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shawna Kwan in Hong Kong at wkwan35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe

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