On May 26th, 1996, Mr Victor Li (34), a wealthy property developer and the son of one of Hong Kong's billionaires, left central Hong Kong for home. He was driven in his blue Nissan President to the quiet enclave of Deep Water Bay. Just short of the house belonging to his father, Mr Li Ka-shing, a car and a van forced the Nissan to stop. Several men grabbed Mr Li and his chauffeur and drove them off at speed.
That evening one of Hong Kong's most notorious criminals, Cheung Tze-keung, otherwise known as Big Spender, telephoned the Li residence. (Big Spender got his name for throwing his money around; he once lost the equivalent of £8 million in a Cambodian casino, and he splashed out on 14 luxury cars.)
He coolly demanded 1.38 billion Hong Kong dollars (£111.5 million) from Mr Li senior for the return of his son and warned he would kill him if the family ever contacted the police or the newspapers.
A deal was done. A nondescript figure in his early 40s with short, thick eyebrows, Big Spender arrived in person to collect the ransom. A truck remained for two days in the driveway while the money was collected and loaded. Mr Li was released unharmed after a few days locked in a wooden box and living on roast pork and rice supplied by his captors.
It seemed to be the perfect crime, and it was inevitable that Big Spender would strike again. On September 29th, 1997, he seized another property tycoon, Walter Kwok (47), after he left his Hong Kong office, and gave him the same wooden box and pork-and-rice treatment, until his family coughed up 600 million HK dollars. Again the police and the media were not told. However, the post-handover tycoons of Hong Kong are not only rich, they have excellent connections in Beijing. Their plight was evidently conveyed to China's leaders.
Thus it was that last week Big Spender and 35 of his colleagues found themselves sitting manacled in a court in Guangzhou, in southern China, having been arrested while doing some business on the mainland in July and charged with the kidnappings as well as with conspiracy and arms and explosives offences.
The nine-day trial marked the end of Cheung's extraordinary freedom of movement in southern China, when he had allegedly committed murders and engaged in arms dealing, protected by corrupt officials. The trial was closed but a prosecution document, leaked on Friday, included details of the kidnappings (which the families to this day deny happened).
The case was based on confessions obtained from the accused, many of whom face the death penalty, which Hong Kong does not have. Several of the accused, who revel in names like Cunning Old Fox and Tall Guy Seven, complained to relatives of being denied food or drink until they confessed.
The case has caused a great commotion in Hong Kong, not just because it revealed Cheung's sensational crimes, but because it involved a Hong Konger facing charges in mainland China for crimes committed in Hong Kong.
The judicial independence of Hong Kong is supposed to be left intact under the policy of one country-two systems, and the Democratic Party chairman, Martin Lee, a lawyer, maintains that according to the Basic Law - China's constitution for Hong Kong - crimes committed in Hong Kong must be tried in Hong Kong, not in mainland China.
The case has raised suspicions that Cheung was arrested in mainland China precisely because the standards of proof and legal transparency there are less stringent. Hong Kong authorities maintain that the Chinese court is within its rights, as Big Spender conspired to carry out the crimes in mainland China and committed other offences there. Audrey Eu, chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, said that lumping the Hong Kong kidnappings together with mainland crimes was tantamount to adding murder charges committed elsewhere to someone caught jaywalking in Hong Kong.
The affair of Big Spender has all the ingredients of a box office hit, so it is no surprise that a film called Operation Billionaires has been rushed out by the director Andy Ng Yiu-kuen. Based closely on the Hong Kong kidnappings, it shows that life imitates art - or at least the typical Asian action movie which makes heroes of characters like Big Spender.
(Tomorrow, Conor O'Clery interviews Chief Executive Mr Tung Chee-hwa about the economic and political issues facing Hong Kong, including the questions raised by the Big Spender case.)