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'BOGUS MARRIAGE' nun arrested
Kinling Lo
Thursday, October 15, 2015
The chief nun of a Buddhist monastery in Tai Po and three other people have been arrested by immigration officers following allegations the nun was involved in scam marriages with mainland monks.
More than 10 officers descended on Ting Wai Monastery yesterday morning and spent three hours taking photographs and questioning people inside.
Arrested were Sik Chi Ting, 47 , whose real name is Lung Yan-loi; her husband Ru Zhi; an Indonesian domestic helper; and another nun, alleged to be the helper's employer. Chi Ting wore a striped long-sleeved T-shirt and pants instead of her robe when taken away, while Ru was in shirt and pants.
All four were taken to Kowloon Bay Immigration Department office.
Ru, 40, was allegedly found in the nun's private quarters inside the monastery during the swoop.
He was revealed to have packed and left Po Lin Monastery on Lantau, where he served as a monk named Sik Chi Kwong, in a report by The Standard's sister paper Sing Tao Daily on Monday.
Chi Ting and Ru are suspected to have made a false declaration and of making false representation to Immigration Department officers when they got married.
The domestic helper, 30, is accused of breaking conditions of stay, while her employer, about 40, is accused of aiding and abetting the breach of conditions.
The department found that the registered address of the domestic helper was not the monastery.
Officers took away laptops, temporary identity cards and mainland notarized certificates
of marriage and divorce from the monastery.
Chi Ting was publicly accused of bogus marriages and mismanagement of the monastery's funds by lawyer and former actress Mary Jean Reimer, who also serves as a director of the monastery.
Reimer suspected Chi Ting had got into a bogus marriage when she was corrected by the nun for filling in "single" as the civil status for the nun in an official document.
In a tape secretly recorded by Reimer, Chi Ting "admitted" getting into bogus marriages with two men to get them Hong Kong residency.
After the arrests, senior immigration officer Karmen Tam Kok-shan said: "Our work on the case is not completed yet and we will continue to check whether bogus marriages are involved."
In the Sing Tao Daily report on Monday, photos of marriage certificates between Chi Ting and two men showed the nun as a "divorced person" when getting into her second marriage with Ru.
Chi Ting married her first husband, Sik Chi Keung, in 2006. He is also a monk from Po Lin Monastery.
He was alleged to have divorced Chi Ting once he got his permanent residency.
Tam added the department does not rule out making more arrests. The monastery is now closed to the public.
Chi Ting came to Hong Kong from the mainland in 1993 and became a nun in 2002.
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